


Double Vision

by SingingSorrowless



Series: Coinherence [1]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Autistic Eddie Brock, Bisexual Eddie Brock, Body Horror, Body Sharing, Bondage, Bottom Eddie Brock, Consensual Mind Control, Denial of Feelings, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hallucinations, I have no fuckin clue what I’m doing, Inspired by Venom (Movie 2018), Loss of Control, M/M, Male Pronouns for Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Multi, Out of Body Experiences, Panic Attacks, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Power Exchange, Slow Burn, Top Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Under-negotiated Kink, Venom Symbiote Loves Eddie Brock, Venom Symbiote Takes Care of Eddie Brock, disconcerting degree of research in San Francisco geography, how do tags, mild dubcon, this is only the second fic I’ve ever written, venom gets drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingSorrowless/pseuds/SingingSorrowless
Summary: Fade to black, credits roll. Venom and Eddie are in high spirits; they’ve just eaten a guy whole, rescued Mrs. Chen from extortion, and have realized they can do whatever they want. Well, how are they going to spend the rest of the night?
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Anne Weying, Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote/Original Female Character(s), Tentacles - Relationship, Xenophilia - Relationship, consentacles - Relationship, i just want everyone to talk about their feelings, just so much fuckin dialogue, kink negotiation - Relationship, resolved emotional tension - Relationship
Series: Coinherence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668205
Comments: 160
Kudos: 604





	1. Drinks Are On Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [taking everyone for a ride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437236) by [Nonymos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonymos/pseuds/Nonymos). 



**PARASITE?**

“Yeah, it’s a term of endearment.” 

**APOLOGIZE.**

“No.”

**APOLOGIZE!**

“Fine, I’m sorry. So, what’d you wanna do now?”

**THE WAY I SEE IT, WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT.**

Eddie chuckled and rolled his eyes as he came to the crosswalk near Mrs. Chen’s shop. The twilight had descended upon the city, illuminated by the sharp colors of neon lights, bouncing their reflections back and forth in shop windows and rearview mirrors of parked cars. The walk from Anne’s place in Telegraph Hill back down to Chinatown had been short and leisurely, but darkness had fallen fast, and with it came the predator instincts prickling at the base of his skull. Perhaps it was only the adrenaline still flooding his system--they had just eaten a guy whole, not two minutes prior--but he noticed that his perception was heightened. Colors were brighter, noises easier to separate into layers. He could roll his senses around in his mouth like a wine, picking up notes of phone conversation across the street, canned sitcom laughter trickling from an upstairs window, a car alarm from a block away. He could taste in the air the distinct scents of five different chinese restaurants competing for his attention. His world had never seemed so saturated with raw stimulus. We can do _whatever_ we want. 

“It’s a big world out there,” he said, blinking a few times to clear his thoughts, “You’ve gotta give me some options here, big guy. Don’t wanna have me overloaded by choices.”

He bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for the light to change, and he could feel his symbiote’s thoughts turning over.

 **WELL WE’RE NOT HUNGRY ANYMORE,** said Venom decisively.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Eddie said with a laugh as the crosswalk sign lit up for him, then a look of realization slapped him in the face. 

“Hey, so that guy we just ate. Did you just absorb him into your mass and turn him into goo, or are you gonna co-opt my digestive system?”

**I SUPPOSE WE’LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH.**

Somehow Eddie could hear a smile in that disembodied voice. He shook his head and gave a low groan.

“Ah fuck, I’m not looking forward to that. If I barf up a human toe later, I’m kicking you out.” 

A stranger passing by them in the crosswalk looked up from her phone and gave him a horrified look. Eddie quickened his pace across the street, and ducked down a busy pedestrian street that was little more than an alleyway, packed with lingering visitors to the fortune cookie factory and patrons of the florist shop. He could feel a sense of amusement spreading its tendrils out from his hindbrain, but he also felt a stronger awareness guiding his perception to the crowd around him, marking out those who might pose a threat. It was always a tight squeeze through this alley, and he usually didn’t mind crowds. However, he found himself drawing in his shoulders and checking over his shoulder for routes of escape. He noticed for the first time that the alley was so narrow, he could easily stand on one fire escape and reach his arms out and- well no, his arms weren’t quite long enough. But Venom’s certainly were.

“So, food is, uh... off the table, as they say,” he said in a lower voice barely audible over the tangled din of Cantonese surrounding him, “Is there anything else you wanna do? The night is young. Personally I think we could use some well-earned fun.”

**WHAT DO YOU USUALLY DO FOR FUN?**

Eddie gave a shrug and ran a hand through his hair. “Tell you the truth, before you came and set up shop in my nervous system, I spent most nights for the past few months getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself.”

**YOU REALLY ARE A LOSER.**

Recent memories bobbed to the surface of Eddie’s mind like detritus caught in the tides of the bay- the thick and familiar smell of Eddie’s favorite bar, and the smooth feel of the bar top under his hands. The listless buzz of cable news on a lonesome night at home. The hollow despair in the pit of his stomach as he drank himself to sleep. He could feel Venom examine each memory with swift precision, then toss it back into the waters. With some effort, Eddie dragged their focus back to the present, to the old walk back home that somehow felt as though he were taking it all in through new eyes. They emerged from the alley and turned unto Washington Street. Eddie kicked an empty can out of his way and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Hey, we’re both losers, you and me. A couple of losers, who just so happened to save the world. So maybe celebrations are in order.”

He rounded a corner onto a wider street and soon came to another crossing. He reached out for the crosswalk button, but paused with his hand in mid air.

“We turn left here on Clay to go home. Is that what we’re doing, or have you thought of something fun?”

 **WELL,** said Venom after a moment, **LETS GO TO YOUR FAVORITE BAR AND GET DRUNK LIKE LOSERS DO.**

“That’s the spirit,” Eddie smiled, pressing the button to continue straight ahead. “It’s a bit of a walk- all the way down in the Tenderloin. But it’s worth it. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall Scottish pub, you’ll love it.”

**DRINKS ARE ON ME.**

“Ha! The man’s got jokes!” said Eddie, then quickly added, holding up a finger, “But really it’s _my_ brain you’re using, _my_ vocabulary, _my_ memories. So really it’s _my_ sense of humor.” 

Eddie could feel his eyes rolling, but he wasn’t the one that rolled them.

**YOU CAN THINK THAT IF YOU WANT. BUT IT WASN’T A JOKE.**

Before Eddie could react, he felt a warm ooze pooling beneath his shirt. With a feeling like his abdominal muscles were being gently split open and pried apart, a thick lump of Venom’s mass forced its way out of his skin. 

“Jesus Christ!” was all Eddie could say as he pulled his jacket closed with one hand and held the other hand to the wet patch like he was trying to staunch the blood from a wound. But instead of the formless slime he was expecting, his palm met something solid and rectangular, surrounded by a thin coating of ooze that was quickly retracting into his body in little rivulets, like sand pulling out from under bare feet when the waves retreat. In the time it took him to register the sensation, the shape was already dry, and fell densely into his hand. He withdrew the mass from under his shirt and stared at it in the sallow light of the street lamps. 

It was a wallet.

But it wasn’t _his_ wallet.

He flipped it open to find the ID and saw, staring back at him, the face of the thug from Mrs. Chen’s shop.

The sound of a car horn snapped him back to reality; he was standing in the middle of the crosswalk, holding up traffic.   
  


“Shit shit shit shit shit,” he huffed as he scrambled to the other side of the street, heart racing. He leaned his weight on one of the letterboxes in front of the post office, and tried to catch his breath.

“How the fuck did you do that?” he mouthed. He gripped the wallet in a white-knuckled fist and rubbed fresh beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

 **I TOLD YOU. WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT,** they smirked.

“You just _Alien’_ ed a dead guy’s whole wallet out of my torso.”

**LIGHTEN UP, PUSSY. ARE WE GETTING DRINKS OR WHAT?**

“Give- just give me a minute, man,” he gasped.

A growling sigh rattled Eddie’s brain stem, and he looked down to find his legs walking of their own accord. He blinked dumbly at his feet, striding across the filthy sidewalk, crunching cigarette butts and gum wrappers beneath the soles of his sneakers. He snapped his head back up just in time to catch a “Watch where you’re going, asshole,” from a surly pedestrian, and hop out of their way. He steadied his breathing and slid the wallet into his front pocket. He wondered how Venom knew the route to the bar, then realized that was a stupid question before he even asked it.

**YES, IT WAS A STUPID QUESTION.**

Eddie dragged a hand across his stubble and tried to adjust his gait so that it didn’t look as though he were being puppeteered, and Venom eased back beneath the surface to return control of his legs.

**YOU GOOD?**

“Yeah. Yeah, I just. Still weird to think about. I ate a guy, and then said a funny quip, but then...his wallet just makes it more real. Saying ‘I ate a guy’ is almost funny because it’s ridiculous. Saying ‘I killed a guy and took his wallet’ isn’t as funny.”

**YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY...NO BODY, NO CRIME.**

Eddie could sense, somehow, Venom’s face splitting into a devilish grin.

“Alright, hold up. As an investigative reporter, I can assure you that’s _for sure_ not how it works!” But Venom’s grin had begun to tease up the corners of Eddie’s own smile. 

They walked together in easy silence for a few minutes as the Cantonese signage began to give way to recognizable franchises, and soon they came to a long tunnel. Eddie used to love riding his motorcycle through this underpass- the echo of the engine bounced off the rounded walls and reverberated in his bones. His bike was certainly totaled. He hadn’t seen it since the chase last week, when Venom had first come out in full force. The crash site was probably a crime scene, the wreckage of his bike locked up in evidence somewhere. He let out a sigh as the cars whizzed passed.

 **SORRY I COULDN’T SAVE YOUR BIKE,** Venom said quietly.

“Don’t sweat it,” Eddie said with a sad smile, “You fixed my legs, and that’s probably way more important. Besides, if it weren’t for you, that high-speed chase would’ve been a lot shorter.”

**TECHNICALLY, IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME, YOU’D HAVE BEEN DEAD IN THE WOODS BEHIND THE LIFE FOUNDATION LONG BEFORE THAT.**

Eddie scoffed.

As they exited the tunnel, an entirely different city unfolded before them. A shinier city. A whiter city. Venom flipped through the map in Eddie’s mind.

**LEFT ON GEARY?**

“Yeah, but...” Eddie trailed off, squinting in the distance. “I’m gonna show you a shortcut. C’mon.” 

He jogged across the street to the corner of Union Square, passing through a little avenue of palm trees and into the plaza. “If you thought the city looked beautiful from up high, just wait ‘til you see this.”

Union Square was a flat rectangle, surrounded by some pleasant trees and shrubs, with an eight story tall monument in the center. There were some people milling about under the street lamps. Classic plaza stuff.

 **I DON’T UNDERSTAND,** said Venom, searching. 

“Well, alright, it’s not much to look at now, I’ll give you that,” said Eddie, raising his hands. “And there’s more stuff underground, but I’ll save that for next time. No, I want to show you something.”

He strode across the square to the monument and planted his feet just so. 

“At Christmas time, the Macy’s does this whole tree lighting ceremony. Over there, to the right. They get a Christmas tree as tall as this column, with a big red star on top. Thousands of people come to see it. And over there, to the left, they turn the square into an ice skating rink. Annie and I used to come…”

His voice trailed off as he squinted his eyes, trying to superimpose a mental image over the scene. It took a moment of adjusting, but finally he was able to conjure the right memory. He could see through Venom’s eyes, looking at the plaza from within his own memories, like virtual reality. There was a chill in the air, and the smell of hot chocolate. Couples laughing and skating and falling down together in the ice rink. Lights strung up in the palm trees. A feeling of contentment welled up in his throat. And then he blinked, and it was gone, replaced by a wave of vertigo.

Venom was silent.

Eddie crossed to the opposite corner of the square and bounded down the steps two at a time, stopping in front of a huge sculpture of a heart, painted in abstract shapes.

“This is, uh. This is where I proposed to Annie,” he said simply. He placed his hand on the cool surface of the heart, then drew it away quickly.

“Alright, enough of that. Let's go get drunk. It’s not much farther.” He put his hands back into his pockets and continued down Geary Street, towards the pub.  
  


Venom remained silent along the last leg of their walk, and Eddie’s mind was able to stretch out enough for some contemplation. Brief bout of melancholy aside, he thought he was still in good spirits. All things considered. He’d had a strange enough week so far that at this point he assumed the shock and horror would hit him all once in a few days. But until then, he might as well have a drink with his new permanent roommate. 

_Well I’ll be the one drinking,_ he thought. _Can’t have an alien head pop out of my torso at the bar. They’ll have to just piggyback off my buzz I guess. Wait, will alcohol even have an effect on them? Will I get plastered and he just stays lucid, piloting my body so I don’t make a fool of myself? Like a built-in designated driver, holy shit. Or will they get drunk too, and I’ll have to deal with a drunk internal monologue? Will that make me double-drunk?_ He imagined Venom’s deep growl of a voice becoming slurred and silly, and hollering like a Woo Girl. The thought seemed to split open a dam of tension within him and sent laughter tumbling out of him, earning him a few strange looks from passersby.

**I CAN HEAR YOU, YOU KNOW.**

“Sorry, man,” Eddie choked out through his laughter, steadying himself on a signpost.

**DO I NEED TO FIND YOU A MEMORY OF YOU BEING A SLOPPY DRUNK? I WON’T HAVE TO LOOK VERY HARD. I’M SURE WE CAN BOTH LAUGH AT THAT.**

“No, no, I’m good,” Eddie said, while his chuckling faded into a contented smile. His ears pricked up at the sound of muffled Irish pub music beckoning them from a few doors down. The Edinburgh Castle Pub was finally in their sights.

“C’mon then, tough guy,” he said, “Let’s put your money where your mouth is.”

**EDDIE, I CAN DRINK YOU UNDER THE TABLE.**

“We’ll see about that.”


	2. Double Drunk

As he pushed open the heavy door of the bar, Eddie’s senses were once again overwhelmed with stimuli- the lights dancing in the stained glass mirror behind the top-shelf bottles on the back bar; the mesmerizing swirl of liquid gold spewing from the tap; the scent of yeast and and greasy french-fries. He was overcome with a sense of deja-vu in reverse; as though the concept of _bar_ was something he had only read about in a story, and was only just now unfolding in front of him for the first time. Yet superimposed over that was a layer of comforting familiarity and routine. 

Eddie’s head swam with the effort of observing everything twice-over. He was reminded of a bad experience with some sub-par weed a few weeks back when he was desperate and alone. It had left him with a paranoid high that was accompanied by a strange sense of double-perception. He felt as though his mind had split in two, with one half of his brain thinking everything was side-splittingly silly and euphoric, while the other half simultaneously corrupted each bit of sensory input into Terror and Disgust. He’d laugh at something stupid, and one half of his brain said _Haha! My laugh is all slurred and exaggerated, like a fuckin’ cartoon…_ While the other half of his brain recalled the memory, just a few seconds removed, and said _That laugh was distorted and grotesque; if anyone else had heard it, they’d have thought you were some sort of broken gargoyle._

When he’d smile, the muscles in his face would register both a dopey grin and a horrifying grimace like a monster from a scary movie, and even if he looked in a mirror he couldn’t tell which was right. He’d get trapped in a loop trying to remember the sound of his own voice, not being able to tell what was real and what was distorted, and then mentally analyzing the whole concept of not being able to trust his own perception. Like two mirrors facing each other, stretching the double images on towards infinity in both directions, trapped in a loop of his own thought for what felt like hours, but was actually only a few seconds. Or perhaps the other way around. 

Even in that moment, he could feel the memory of his own bad high being thumbed through like the pages of a book, as though he were a silent voyeur inside another man’s brain. But this time, unlike the parallel tracks of _hilarious_ and _horrifying,_ his mind was separated into the much more benign dichotomy of _familiar_ and _foreign_. And this time he knew that if he began to tip backwards into the yawning abyss of metacognition, he wouldn’t fall into the loop forever, but-

**BUT I WOULD CATCH YOU. LIKE A SLIMY BUNGEE CORD.**

Eddie snapped back to the present, trying to adjust his eyes in the dim light while his strangely vivid memory faded into his periphery, and was replaced with the Castle Pub slowly rendering around him. The sense of vertigo had returned.

“Eddie! You gonna stand in the doorway all night, or you gonna order a drink?” called the voice of the bartender, from a far away place.

“Jack! My guy! Sorry, I uh-” Eddie raked his hands through his hair as he let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “I’ve, uh...I’ve had a day.”

The bar was busy but not crowded, and Eddie’s legs carried him across the worn wooden floors, squeezing past a few chatting patrons to take his usual spot at the bar.

“What’ll you have?” Jack asked over his shoulder. He finished drying off a highball glass with his rag, and then slung the rag over his shoulder, turning to face Eddie with a bemused raised eyebrow. What a classic bartender move. Like one of Plato’s Forms- the platonic ideal of a bartender, like some sort of-

**I’LL TAKE THE USUAL, JACK.**

“I’ll take the usual, Jack,” Eddie said as he cleared his throat. “You know me. Gimme a pint of Anchor Steam and a smile.” And then he added, “None of that hipster shit.”

Jack rolled his eyes and nodded over to the television, which Eddie somehow hadn’t noticed was playing LIVE BREAKING NEWS coverage of the aftermath of the Life Foundation space shuttle explosion. 

“You here to celebrate?” asked Jack, with a smirk. “Downfall of your nemesis?”

**YOU DON’T KNOW THE HALF OF IT.**

Eddie drummed his fingers on the shiny surface of the bar top and watched the little bubbles of turbulence swirl through his beer as Jack poured it from the tap. 

“Somethin’ like that.”

Jack slid the glass down to Eddie, whose hand shot out and caught it reflexively while he was still staring at the dripping nozzle. The glass was ice cold but the heat from his hand was already beginning to melt the frosted condensation. He could hear the urgency of a familiar voice through the tinny speakers of the tv, despite the volume being turned nearly all the way down. He glanced up to see a reporter who he had known in passing when he’d worked at the network. Carlos. Friendly in a “trying-too-hard” kind of way. He was gesturing out to the bay, where the wreckage of Drake’s rocket was choking the surface of the water with a thick film of fuel. He was standing in the exact spot where Eddie had dragged himself out of the water, lungs burning, searching his own body for any sign that Venom had survived.

“This guy has no idea what he’s talking about,” he scoffed, feeling the condensation drip down his thumb.

“What, you don’t like Carlos?” asked Jack, only half listening.

Eddie shrugged. He _had_ turned down the story when the network had offered it to him. But seeing another reporter on the scene, _his_ scene, made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

**WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’LL MAKE OF THE GIANT GASH IN THE FUEL CANISTER WHEN THEY DREDGE UP THE ROCKET?**

Eddie blinked.

“That’s a good point,” he said out loud.

Jack had just enough time to give him a questioning look before another customer hopped up unto the bar stool nearest Eddie. It was a young woman with long dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail, with running shoes slung over her shoulder. He turned his head to mumble into his shirt collar.

“If anyone else starts investigating the Life Foundation, they might end up pulling on some threads that lead them to us.” He absently drew his hand to the wallet in his front pocket.

**LIGHTEN UP, EDDIE.**

“I’ve gotta be the one to control this narrative, otherwise…”

**ARE YOU GONNA TALK, OR ARE YOU GONNA DRINK? C’MON,I’VE NEVER HAD BEER BEFORE.**

Eddie gave a half-smile and took a long, leisurely draft of his beer. It was heavy and deep, with a dark richness that rose up the back of his throat and filled up his nose like campfire smoke. He held it in his mouth a moment to make sure Venom could taste it. Something like liquid tendrils swelled into the cells of his tongue, and then receded, contemplative.

**WEIRD.**

He chuckled and raised his hands in a shrug. “It’s a acquired taste.”

“Huh?” said Running Shoes Girl, looking up from her phone and taking out her ear buds.

“Oh, uh… I was just saying this stuff is an acquired taste,” he mumbled, raising his glass.

**NICE SAVE.**

She considered his beer.

“That looks pretty heavy. I’m more of an IPA girl, myself,” she said. She put her phone in her pocket and turned ever-so-slightly in Eddie’s direction.

“Yeah, I feel you. But Anchor Steam’s a classic. This stuff’s got those...what do they call ‘em... notes of caramel. A ‘toasty’ quality, and all that shit.”

“You sound like quite the connoisseur,” she smirked, taking her own glass from Jack with a nod.

Eddie shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. It was warm and damp. From the condensation on his hand, or from sweat? He couldn’t tell. 

“Ahh well, you know,” he shrugged.

**YES, THAT’S A NORMAL THING PEOPLE SAY.**

“Hey man, knock it off,” he hissed over his shoulder.

Running Shoes paused with her glass halfway to her lips.

“Excuse me?” she asked. 

“Sorry! Sorry. It’s not you,” he fumbled, standing up abruptly and scraping his stool back. He slinked over to a booth in the corner, away from the TV screen.

**SMOOTH.**

“You’re throwing me off,” he scoffed into his beer, settling into the corner. The bench was hard and wooden with an upright back that he couldn’t get comfortable in, so he hunched over the table, leaning on his elbows.

 **I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I’M HAVING A GREAT TIME,** said Venom. An oil slick tendril snaked out of Eddie’s right jacket sleeve, wrapped around his wrist, slid across his knuckles, and descended like a proboscis into Eddie’s beer. The volume of the liquid steadily dropped.

“Thats fuckin weird, man,” Eddie said with a wince, turning his head away.

**YOU WERE TAKING TOO LONG.**

Eddie took the glass in his left hand and took another sip while trying to wipe his right hand on his shirt. But Venom had already absorbed into his skin and reemerged in his left hand. The glass jerked upward, clinking into Eddie’s teeth and spilling a mouthful of beer down the front of his shirt.

**HA. HA.**

“Christ!” Eddie hissed, dabbing at his chest with a handful of napkins.

 **RELAX, EDDIE.** Venom’s voice was a smile. There was a prickling sensation across Eddie’s skin and a shiver in his spine as a slow warmth rose up through his chest and retreated. His shirt was dry again.

Eddie shook his head and finished the last of his drink before Venom could steal it. He moved to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, but thought better of it, and instead grabbed another napkin.

“Better not get any ooze on my bracelets.”

He ordered another beer and a plate of french fries for Venom (who he could tell was already getting hungry again), trying to avoid the eye of Running Shoes Girl. 

After he slid back into their booth and took a sip of his beer, he sat for a moment in contemplation. His head was buzzing with nervous energy, and his knee was bouncing against the underside of the table.

“So,” he finally said, “You say we can do anything we want.”

**CORRECT**

“But I mean... Surely there’s gotta be some limits as to what we can and can’t do.”

 **WE CAN’T EAT GOOD PEOPLE,** Venom said, reemerging from Eddie’s hand and stealing a fry. Eddie watched the french fry become enveloped in blackness, then disappear into his skin. He could taste the salt.

“Yeah, good job on the pop quiz,” he said, squinting at his hand, “But like, what if I want to turn invisible or something? We can’t do that, can we?” He had picked up a french fry and was gesturing with it, the way one might when having a conversation with someone sitting in front of them. He realized this and quickly shoved it into his mouth. 

**WELL NOW YOU’RE JUST BEING PEDANTIC.**

“Nah, I’m serious! You can rifle through my memories and figure out my special skills-"

**WHAT, LIKE CABLE NEWS INFOTAINMENT.**

“Alright, you know what? I’d like to see you host your own news show, asshole. Probably eat the cameraman,” Eddie said through his chewing. “Anyway, I don’t have a lot of context for what your cool alien powers are.”

**_OUR_ POWERS.**

“Right, right. What’s mine is yours. Mi body es su body, and all that. But like, I know we’ve got extendo-arms, bullet deflection, super strength, eating french fries without a mouth. And when we go full suit-up mode, we’re like eight feet tall, and I don’t even know how that works. Like, do I stay me-sized inside your biomass like some sort of mech suit, or are you transforming me to fit your shape?”

**ONE WOULD THINK SUCH AN ASTUTE INVESTIGATOR WOULD NOTICE IF HIS FEMURS WERE EXTENDING.**

“Hey pal, there’s a lot of very strange sensations going on inside my body now, if you haven’t noticed. When you turn my arms into those rubber sticky-hand toys, forgive me if I don’t stop to wonder where my elbows went.”

**YOUR BODY IS GOING THROUGH A LOT OF CHANGES, EDDIE. IT’S NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF. YOU’LL NOTICE SOME INCREASED SWEATING, SOME STRANGE NEW URGES.**

“Yeah, laugh it up, chucklehead. You’re not the one who had to actually experience puberty.”

In quick succession, a series of memories shuffled behind Eddies eyes, as though Venom were searching for the word _puberty_ in Eddie’s database. Body hair, ears that stuck out too far, cracking voice, awkward boners in English class, strange growth spurts- all flashing by in still frames. A half-formed thought began to coagulate in his subconscious.

**HA. HA.**

“What’s so funny? Is it the ears?” Eddie could already feel a flush of pink rising up his neck.

**NO, IT’S THE QUESTION YOU’RE ABOUT TO ASK.**

“Oh yeah, wise guy? And what would that be?” Eddie tried to chew his french fry in a defiant manner, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

**YOU WERE GOING TO ASK ABOUT THE EXTENDO-POWERS. IF I COULD ISOLATE THEM IN ANY SPECIFIC PART OF YOUR BODY. GIVE YOU AN EXTRA INCH OR TWO WHERE IT COUNTS.**

“I was _not_ going to ask you that.”

**NOT OUT LOUD.**

French fry chewing. Swig of beer. Bouncing leg. Tapping fingers. A few moments passed.

“But as long as the question’s out in the air-”

Venom laughed so loud in Eddie's head that he drowned out the Dropkick Murphys blaring from the pub's speakers.

**DO YOU NEED SOME HELP IN THAT DEPARTMENT, EDDIE?**

“No! No. Just a matter of curiosity, is all.”

**YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER. WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WANT.**

“So you keep telling me.”

**WHY THE SUDDEN INTEREST? YOU LOOKING TO GET SOME ACTION TONIGHT, EDDIE? TRYING TO GET YOU DICK WET? TICKLE THE PICKLE?”**

“God, nobody says that!” Eddie’s face wrinkled into a grimace of laughter.

**IT’S _YOUR_ BRAIN. _YOUR_ VOCABULARY. _YOUR_ SENSE OF HUMOR.**

“Yeah, well, nobody says ‘tickle the pickle’ unless they’re thirteen.”

**YOU JUST SAID IT! BACK AT MRS. CHEN’S. ‘WHAT CULINARY DELIGHTS WILL TICKLE THE PICKLE TONIGHT?’”**

“That’s- that’s different. I was using it ironically.”

**HMH. QUESTION STILL STANDS.**

“I don't know, pal. I wasn't planning on it-"

**YOU NEED A WINGMAN WITH EXTENDO-POWERS; IS THAT WHAT IT IS?**

"-but even if I _was_ looking for a hook-up, I don't need your help. I’ve got game, with or without weird alien powers.”

**IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK?**

“Hell yeah it is. I’m a hot commodity.”

**THEY’RE LINING UP AROUND THE BLOCK TO GET A PIECE OF THIS UNEMPLOYED MEAT SACK.**

“Hey, that’s _formerly_ unemployed”

**I’VE YET TO SEE A CHECK.**

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got this goon’s wallet, isn’t it?”

**YEAH, YOU’RE WELCOME.**

Eddie finished his french fries and risked another glance up at Running Shoes Girl. She was chatting companionably with Jack while looking up at the news every now and again.

**YOU GONNA PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS, HOT SHOT? SHOW ME YOUR GAME. WE'VE ALREADY GOT EYES ON SOME EASY PREY.**

In an instant, Eddie’s heart sped up, twisting a knot in the pit of his belly. His senses were on high-alert, drinking in every detail of Running Shoes Girl with a manic urgency. The stray locs falling free from her ponytail. Her long dark fingers with their chipped nail polish, holding on loosely to her near-empty glass. The way she squinted when she strained to hear the television.

**MMM, SHE SMELLS DELICIOUS. I CAN TASTE HER ENDORPHINS FROM HERE.**

“We’re not eating her.”

He noticed she had stashed her running shoes in a tote bag that was tucked under her seat. They had blue stripes down the sides, with orange laces. A memory lurched up like a bubble in a tar pit- an image of Anne coming home from the gym in those same sneakers, kicking them off into her closet as she took off her sweaty tank top.

 **ANNE?** Venom perked up at the thought of her like a dog catching sight of a squirrel. **AHH, IS THAT WHY YOU’RE NOT MAKING A MOVE?**

Eddie’s shoulders sagged a little and he drummed his fingers on the side of the glass. 

“Yeah, well… Dan’s a nice guy. I owe him a lot. I don’t want to wreck what they’ve got going on. It’s probably healthier if I try to move on.”

While Venom was still thinking of a clever response, Eddie downed the rest of his beer and stood up, carrying the empty glass and plate over to the bar and sitting back down where he was before. The woman side-eyed him with a questioning eyebrow.

“Can I get an IPA this time, Jack?” he said, in what he thought was a nonchalant voice.

“What kind?”

Eddie turned to Running Shoes Girl and gave his most winning smile.

“What do you recommend?” 

She seemed surprised that he was speaking to her, and shared a quick look with Jack before turning to meet Eddie’s smile.

“Oh, um,” she swished her glass and pursed her lips, “Not this cheap stuff. If you want an IPA to impress you, go for something local. I’m a fan of that Cellarmaker Brewery on Howard Street.”

Eddie clicked his teeth as he tried to find the memory he was looking for.

“Yeah, Cellarmaker...I think I’ve passed by there before. Next to the yoga place?”

“That’s the one,” she smiled. Eddie leaned forward on his elbows and looked up at Jack with a sly grin.

“What’ve you got from Cellarmaker, my friend?”

Jack glanced over his shoulder to read the labels on his shelf.

“I got bottles of 'Repeating Symbols,’ ‘Cosmic Tide'-”

“Ooh, ‘Cosmic Tide’ is a good one,” Running Shoes blurted out.

“But their newest release I’ve only got in cans,” Jack continued, “It’s called ‘Alien Life Form.’”

 **THAT ONE!** Venom said as Eddie blinked incredulously at the can that Jack was holding up. The label was a hazy blue galaxy, with a purple tentacle monster displayed under futuristic font. 

“Those are some weird names for beer,” he said with a laugh, “You said you like ‘Cosmic Tide,’ but are you up for something new? Want to experience an ‘Alien Life Form’ with me?” 

**I HOPE YOU’RE PROUD OF YOURSELF. I’M THE ONLY HERE ONE WHO KNOWS THAT’S FUNNY.**

_It’s called ‘dramatic irony,’ dumbass,_ Eddie thought, taking extra care not to say it out loud.

Running Shoes eased her posture and held up her hands in defeat.

“Alright, you’ve twisted my arm.” Her face was more open than before, but she still seemed cautious.

“One for me and one for the lady,” Eddie nodded to Jack, without taking his eyes off her. 

“It’s Melissa,” she said, putting down her empty glass and holding out her hand. 

He shook her hand warmly. “I’m Eddie.”

Jack glanced between the two of them as he poured their drinks into fresh glasses and set them on the bar top. Eddie took his and held it up to Running Shoes--or rather, Melissa--for a toast. 

“Cheers,” she said as she gave his glass a gentle clink.

They each took a sip at the same time and Eddie paused once again to hear Venom’s reaction.

**IT TASTES EVEN LESS LIKE CHOCOLATE THAN THE OTHER ONE DID. BUT I CAN APPRECIATE THAT IT’S NAMED AFTER ME.**

Eddie gave a mental equivalent of an obliging shrug, and swallowed.

“It’s very hoppy,” Melissa said, “I like it.”

“Now who sounds like the connoisseur?” Eddie asked with a raised eyebrow. Jack rolled his eyes and walked away to serve another patron. Melissa gave him a ‘don’t push your luck’ kind of look, but the corners of her mouth turned up in a lopsided smirk. She set the glass down for a moment and gave him a once-over.

“I saw you talking to yourself earlier,” she said, gesturing to the corner booth.

“Yeah?” 

“Jack and I were wondering what you were talking about.”

“Oh, I…” he let out a stream of air and darted his eyes to the side. _A little help, pal?_

**YOU DON’T NEED MY HELP, REMEMBER? WHY DON’T YOU USE YOUR ‘SPECIAL SKILLS,’ INTREPID REPORTER?**

Eddie pulled his phone out of his pocket and laughed nervously, “I was, uh...taking dictation. I’m a reporter, and i’m working on a new story-”

“While you’re drinking at a bar?”

He held up his hands. “Hey, what can I say? I’m committed to my work. It’s faster than typing.”

“You looked like you were having quite the conversation over there,” she said over the top of her glass. 

“See, that’s the thing- it’s all about the stage presence, the diction. You gotta have a conversation with the camera. Sometimes charisma needs a little practice. This guy-” he pointed a thumb at Carlos up on the screen, blinking to help his eyes focus on the television, “This guy needs some more work.”

She considered this as she swirled her beer. 

“You were talking to yourself in the corner so you could be more charismatic?”

He smiled wide. In his head, he could perceive his own expression in third person. It was at the same time dashing and utterly ridiculous.

“Don’t be so sure it’s not working,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. 

Within five minutes he learned that she actually worked at the yoga studio next to Cellarmaker, and often passed by Castle Pub on her evening runs but had never stopped in before. In ten minutes he learned that her apartment was just a short walk away. In fifteen minutes they’d finished their beers and were drinking whiskey neat. 

Eddie had not anticipated how quickly he would get drunk. 

This was definitely Venom’s fault. 

Although it didn’t feel as though there was a second drunk person banging around inside his head, he could tell that his reactions were being amplified by experiencing them twice-over, and Venom seemed to have lost whatever sense of reserve that kept them coiled densely in the back of Eddie’s mind. He could feel their liquid mass easing out into his extremities, like a cat taking a leisurely stretch after a nap. Like a hand sliding snugly into a glove. He felt thoroughly swelled and saturated by the symbiote, as though the only thing keeping Venom from seeping through his skin was pure surface tension. And suddenly the line where _he_ became _them_ wasn’t so clear anymore. They couldn’t remember how that sense of double perception had been so terrifying before, when now it seemed so natural. They squeezed one eye shut, and then the other.

“Why are your eyes doing that?” laughed Melissa, her nose scrunching up. 

Eddie covered one eye with their hand. 

“You know how- you know how they used to have the red and blue glasses for 3D movies?” they said, their words thick and slow in their mouth. 

“Yeah, and the prizes in Cracker Jack.” She was smiling at him as she leaned on the bar and swiveling gently back and forth in her bar stool. 

“Yes, yes! Exactly. You got it. You know how if you close one eye, you see all red. You close the other eye, you see all blue. But you open your eyes at the same time, and you get the 3D picture. It jumps out!” He made an explosion sort of gesture with his hands, then had to steady himself on the bar. 

“You ever feel...you ever feel like you’ve only had one eye open your whole life? And then one day you open both eyes and it’s like you’re seeing in 3D for the first time?”

“Eddie, you’re drunk,” she scoffed, but her eyes were smiling. 

“Maybe we are,” they said with a smirk, throwing back the last of their whiskey. Their blood was warm and their head was swimming. 

Melissa glanced up to meet their gaze, and her eyes lingered there as she stroked her finger along the edge of her glass. She drew in a breath. 

“You wanna get out of here?”

The hair stood up on the back of Eddie’s neck as they reached into their front pocket and pulled out the wallet. They didn’t look at the face on the ID. They pulled out more than enough cash for both theirs and Melissa’s drinks, plus a generous tip for Jack, and set it down on the bar nervously.

“Yeah, uh…” Eddie cleared their throat, “Yeah. Yes. **Okay.** ”

They gave a quick nod to Jack without meeting his eye, and Melissa stepped down from the barstool. She took her tote bag up onto her shoulder and slid her hand into Eddie’s as she led them to the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I sure hope somebody googles Cellarmaker Brewing Company so they can see the names of the beers they offer. You can’t make this shit up, my dudes!


	3. Feedback

Melissa was a distant story in their mind’s eye as Eddie’s feet followed her out of the bar. They were viewing her through second-hand eyes as they settled backward into the comfort of Eddie’s mind, curious at this strange turn of events, hungry for these new sensations. 

“ **Wait, no,** _I’m_ Eddie, and _you’re_ you _..._ ” he said, staring at his hands with eyes that kept shifting focus, forcing himself to the surface of his consciousness, trying to tread water in the dark.

 **WE ARE** **_VENOM_ **was the reply, but the voice alone was enough to remind Eddie they were two distinct beings. 

“Yeah, you’re Eddie. Wow, you really _are_ drunk,” said Melissa through a disbelieving laugh. She was leaning against the outside of the bar, stepping out of her flats and sliding her running shoes back into her feet. 

“Ha. Yeah, I guess I am,” Eddie said, letting out a stream of air and running a hand through hair. _His_ hand, _his_ hair, _his_ breath in his lungs. He squeezed one eye shut, and then the other. 

Melissa stood back up and gave him a once over as she grabbed the front of his jacket and gave a small tug to straighten it out. She bit her bottom lip. She pulled harder on his jacket to bring his face down to hers. 

**OUR BLOOD FEELS WARM, EDDIE.**

He could feel Venom unfurling into his fingertips, into the veins, into the cells. He was taut and full with the Other’s presence, prickling under the surface, flushing his face with heat, tightening his muscles. He shook his head to clear his vision but the vertigo remained, throbbing behind his eyes. He was _hungry._ He clenched his hands into fists, and felt his claws digging into his palms. 

“Don’t…” Eddie growled as his eyes glazed over, “You’ve gotta let me stay in control.”

“Ok, Jesus,” Melissa said, dropping her hands from his jacket.

“No! God, sorry. I, uh. Sorry. Didn’t think I said that out loud.”

She studied his eyes for a tense few moments, and at last took a hesitant step forward, raising an eyebrow. Her heart was pumping hot blood into the capillaries of her cheeks, carrying endorphins to her sweat glands. Venom was right; she _did_ smell delicious.

“Is it some sort of kink thing?” she asked, unsure. “You need to be in control?”

He gulped hard, biting his lips with teeth that seemed sharper than they used to be.

“Something like that.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and cocked her head to one side. 

“Well you say you like being in control, but are you up for something new?”

And then she drew herself up onto the tiptoes of her running shoes, pulled him down to meet her, and kissed him.

He felt a flood of Venom exploring his mouth from the inside out, tendrils swelling into the cells of his tongue just as they did when they were tasting his beer for the first time. And then there they were in his mouth from the outside-in, and Eddie was no longer on a dark street corner holding a woman he didn’t know. He was in the blue light of the forest, heart pounding in his chest with terror and hope. And there was Venom, eight feet tall and woman-shaped for some reason, hot and urgent from the hunt. Venom had come back for him, and it was the most beautiful thing Eddie had ever seen. 

**HELLO, EDDIE** , Venom had said, lifting him up by the collar and pulling him into a deep kiss. and Eddie accepted without thinking, without hesitation. He cupped Venom’s face in his hands and returned the kiss in desperation, sucking Venom’s tongue down into himself with a hunger he didn’t know he had, tasting in Venom’s mouth the blood of their prey and the ichor of his own adrenaline. And Venom melted into Eddie, and Eddie melted into Venom, and Eddie opened both his eyes for the first time. 

What he saw was Anne’s face, pressed to his own, as the last of Venom’s tendrils soaked back into his flesh. 

Anne. 

Of course, Anne. It had been Anne the whole time. He had to have known that. Who else could it have been? 

Anne. 

He startled at the touch of a woman’s fingers on his skin. _That’s not Anne._

Melissa had her arms tangled around him and was grinding into his thigh with one hand at the back of his neck and the other inching up the front of his shirt. With one eye he saw her in the light of the flickering street lamps, and with the other eye he could see Anne in the forest of his memory. 

“Get out of my head!” he shouted, pushing Melissa away in panic. She gasped for a moment before confusion turned to anger. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hissed, shoving him right back. She shook her head in disbelief. With a “Fucking hell” muttered under her breath, she snatched her purse back up from where she had dropped it, and stormed off into the night. 

Eddie blinked dumbly in her direction as she disappeared around a corner, panting heavily. His mouth felt tender and swollen from kissing.

**WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?**

At the sound of Venom’s voice, Eddie’s confused panic accelerated into rage, and his heart pounded loudly in his chest. He pointed an accusatory finger at the air. 

“You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve,” he seethed, chest heaving, “Why don’t you tell me what all that was about, jackass!”

**I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE-**

“Motherfucker!” shouted Eddie through gritted teeth. He kicked a trash can onto its side and immediately cursed at the pain in his foot. 

**IS THIS A THING THAT HAPPENS WHEN WE’RE DRUNK?** Venom’s presence began to retreat back from Eddie’s extremities.

“Stop. Just stop! You’ve been rooting through my memories all night! Fuckin’ puberty, drinking alone. And I didn’t say nothing. But I try to have a good time with a nice girl and you make me think about Annie. What, to throw me off? This must all be one big motherfuckin’ joke to you. Is that what my life is to you? Just a big game you can play with, with that smug fuckin’ look on your face?”

There was a beat as Venom backtracked through the past thirty seconds. 

**WAIT, THAT? I DIDN'T DO THAT. THAT WASN’T ME.**

“Oh, that wasn’t you? That wasn’t _you_?” Eddie threw his hands up, “What, I popped that memory into my own head? To sabotage myself?”

**APPARENTLY!**

“Now listen here, you fuckin’ cockblock-” Eddie began, taking a step backwards. But his foot found the edge of the curb, and he began to stumble backwards into the street. 

Before he could blink, a thick black tether shot out of his chest and grasped unto the nearest street lamp, like some sort of-

**SLIMY BUNGEE CORD.**

Eddie hung there in limbo for a moment, caught at a forty-five degree angle above pavement. Slowly the tether began to reel him back upright, and then disappeared back into his chest.

**YOU WANNA TRY THAT ONE MORE TIME?**

Eddie let out a heavy sigh and sat down on the curb, hunching over with his elbows resting on his knees. 

Gripping the sides of his spinning head, Eddie said, “Wipe that smug look off your face.”

**HMH.**

As Eddie tried to calm his breathing, and his sense came back into focus, he became aware that the way he was sitting was incredibly uncomfortable. He looked down to find a painful bulge pressing against his jeans. 

“God fucking dammit,” he winced, pinching the bridge of his nose.

**GUESS YOU GOTTA GO HOME AND TICK-**

“Don’t you say another fuckin’ word.”

He sighed. He dug at a scrap of trash in the gutter with the toe of his shoe. He stared at the flickering street lamp, trying to focus his eyes. Finally, he drew in a breath. 

“Look man, I’m sorry for yellin’ at you.” He rose to his feet, brushing the grit from his pants. 

**YEAH, YOU WERE AN ASSHOLE,** Venom said, bristling. 

“I know,” Eddie said, sticking his hands in his pockets as he turned to walk home, proverbial tail between his legs. He took one step and found throbbing pain. Muttering curses under his breath, he glanced around, then tried to adjust his erection so it was tucked into the waistband of his pants. It was still uncomfortable, but at least he could walk. 

There was a soft glow of chatter spilling out from the pizza shop nearby, mingling with the muffled melodies of Flogging Molly from within Castle Pub. His bleary head was throbbing with the sound of it. The headlights from passing cars were like knives in his retinas. He was hyper-aware of his slightly stumbling gait, and even more aware of the bruising ache in his pants. Double-drunk wasn’t as fun as he’d thought it would be.

**HEY EDDIE?** said Venom after a few minutes of walking.

“Hm?”

**YOU’RE A LOUSY DATE.**

Eddie gave a snort and wiped his face with his hands. 

“Yeah, ladies don’t like it when you scream at yourself and then push them off of you.”

**NOT TO RUNNING SHOES. TO ME!**

Eddie allowed himself a chuckle, and some of the tension eased from his head. 

“You? You got complaints?”

Venom seized control of Eddie’s hands and began listing off on his fingers. 

**FIRST I HAD TO GET MY OWN DRINKS. YOU’RE WELCOME. THEN YOU BARELY SHARED YOUR FRENCH FRIES. AND THEN YOU DITCHED ME FOR ANOTHER WOMAN,** they said, in mock incredulity.

Eddie smiled and rolled his eyes

“Hey, you offered to buy the drinks,” he said, “and we sort of share the fries by default, no matter whose mouth they go through. And besides, I wouldn’t have even gone to talk to her if you hadn't been taunting me.”

**YEAH OKAY. BUT THEN YOU YELLED AT ME AND THAT WASN'T COOL.**

“No, it wasn’t. You’re right,” Eddie said, shaking the feeling back into his hands to try to regain control of them. Venom’s presence retreated from the surface of his skin, but lingered as a warmth within his fingertips. 

**I WOULD’VE STORMED OFF TOO IF I COULD’VE.**

“Nah, you wouldn’t’ve. It’s _we_ now, remember? Like it or not.”

Venom prickled from within Eddie’s chest cavity. 

**MAYBE RUNNING SHOES WOULD’VE BEEN A NICER HOST,** Venom said, emerging from between Eddie’s shoulder blades and manifesting a head for the first time that night. He hung in the air in front of Eddie’s face, bobbing slightly with every footstep, tongue snaking out between needle teeth.

 **OH, MELISSA,** ** _WANT TO EXPERIENCE AN ALIEN LIFE FORM WITH ME?_** they said, screwing up their lidless eyes into an expression that Eddie could only imagine was a grotesque attempt at “batting eyelashes”. 

“Oh, shut up.” Eddie rolled his eyes, pushing Venom’s face away with the back of his hand.

“I feed you a whole-ass guy, I take you on a nice walk through my city, got you drunk for the first time, got you a second-hand make-out, and this is the thanks I get? Face it, pal; this is the best date you’ve ever been on.”

Venom considered this. 

**GUESS I CAN’T ARGUE WITH THAT LOGIC,** Venom said, twisting the corners of their too-wide mouth. Eddie gave them a Look.

And for a split second, instead of Venom’s toothy maw in front of him, he saw his own face--viewed through Venom’s eyes--screwed up into a grimace. Slowly Venom’s face came back into focus, until both images were transparent layers shifting in his vision. 

“Oh God,” Eddie said, clamping his eyes shut.

 **OH GOD** , Venom said, slinking unsteadily back into Eddie’s body. 

With their shared headache now amplified ten-fold, Eddie shoved his hands in his pockets and turned down a side street, taking a different route home. He wasn’t in the mood to pass by Union Square again. It was a little quieter down this street- there were fewer pedestrians, fewer cars. More space to think. Venom was quieter, too; Eddie could feel them in the back of his eyes, wincing along with him at the bright lights,. He could feel them inside his headache, throbbing in shared pain. And if he concentrated very hard, he thought he could feel Venom in the ventricles of his heart, swooshing in and out with each pump of blood. He hoped Venom wasn’t eating it.

At last Eddie spoke.

“Hey, uh...Thanks, by the way. For buying the drinks.” 

**UH HUH.**

Another moment passed, and Eddie’s face cracked into a smile.

“But to be _fair-”_

**HERE WE GO.**

“-if I hadn’t let you eat that guy, you wouldn’t have the wallet, so _you’re_ welcome for that.”

 **_WE_ ** **ATE TH-**

“Fine, _we_ ate that guy, but _I_ let you come out to play.”

Venom scoffed. **_LET_ ** **ME?**

“That’s right. I said it.”

**EDDIE, YOU COULDN’T HOLD ME BACK IF YOU TRIED. AND TRUST ME, YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO.**

Eddie shrugged.

“Alright, alright. I guess if you really had to wait for my permission to come out, I would’ve busted my ass on the sidewalk tonight. Thanks for that too.”

**YEAH, WELL I SAID I’D CATCH YOU.**

A brief flash of orange heat flared in their shared memory, and Eddie could see Venom billowing above him as a living parachute, flames licking at their delicate black mass as they gently lowered Eddie into the waters of the bay. There was loss and despair and the singe of terror and-

Eddie clenched his eyes shut to force the memory back down. 

“Yeah, I know. I know you’ll catch me,” he said, the memory fading, “But if we’re gonna be a team, I need to trust that you’re not gonna, like...take over. You’re still new to earth, so you’ve gotta trust my judgment on when it’s safe to suit up. Not every problem can be solved by eating people. If we wanna live a long and happy life, we’ve gotta keep a low profile. Now... I could feel you coming up to the surface back there with Melissa, and I know I shouldn’t have yelled at you, but it was really freakin’ me out.”

Venom squirmed defensively within him. 

**DOUBLE DRUNK. MADE ME FEEL BLURRY.**

Eddie sighed. 

“Yeah, ok. I get that. Like the wires got crossed. Guess I can’t blame you; you’ve never even been drunk before.”

**DOES IT ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THIS?**

“Not...not this much. I think it’s amplified because we’re both feeling it. And then we’re feeling each other feel it. Like...hmm...what’s it like. Oh! It’s like if you hold a microphone too close to a speaker and you get that loud feedback. That’s what it is! It’s a feedback loop.”

A metallic screeching pierced through Eddie’s memory, and he tried to plug his ears.

“Jesus fuck! Yes, ok! Fuck! Yes, that’s what feedback sounds like! God, just take my word for it next time!”

**FUCK, EVERYTHING HURTS.**

“Yeah, tell me about it!”

**YOUR MEMORIES MADE DRINKING SEEM MUCH MORE FUN.**

“It _was_ fun, before I fucked up with Melissa,” he said bitterly. “Now I’ve gotta deal with _this_ fuckin’ thing.” He gestured at his pants. He had thought he could walk off his erection but it still hadn’t settled down, and the pain was like an angry bruise in the forefront of his mind.

**WELL I WASN’T GONNA SAY ANYTHING-**

“Yeah, thank fuck for your sense of propriety.”

**-BUT I THINK IT’S MAKING YOU CRANKY.**

“Oh, fuck off.”

**I'M PRETTY SURE IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE THAT.**

“Yeah, no shit. Hmm, It’s almost like there’s something screwing with my circulatory system. Wonder what that could be.”

Venom bristled.

**BIG TALK FOR SOMEONE WHOSE HEART IS WITHIN FEEDING DISTANCE.**

Eddie groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, then let out a tired sigh. 

“Man, what are we doing?”

**WHAT, BICKERING?**

Eddie took a deep breath. 

“I guess we’re both a little on-edge.”

They walked in a tense yet intimate silence, until at last they reached the back of their apartment building. Eddie slipped down the alleyway and traced his familiar rut to the back door. But as soon as he turned the corner, he stopped short. His eyes caught the jagged edges of the broken upstairs window, where they had leapt through just a few days prior.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the shattered glass, replaying the fight with Treece’s men in his mind. Had it really only been a few days ago? And yet, it was all so fresh in his memory- the taste of his own adrenaline, the thrill of Venom’s power in his veins. The pain of his headache was swiftly displaced by the intensity of a hunter’s focus.

There was a bouncing in the balls of his feet, an itch in the muscles of his legs, a prickle on the back of his neck. There was a part of him that was already calculating how high the window was. He’d never been that good at math, but somehow his body knew exactly how much of a running start they’d need to clear it. Knew exactly what they were capable of

Eddie crouched low to the ground like a predator gearing to pounce. 

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

**ALWAYS.**

Venom flooded through Eddie’s system to the brink of bursting, as though the entirety of their full eight foot tall frame was being compressed within Eddie’s skin.

“Catch me,” Eddie said, and launched into a sprint, legs propelling him off the ground with superhuman strength. 

And as they leapt into the air, Eddie felt himself falling. 

He closed one eye and saw Venom’s writhing black mass bursting through every pore of his skin. He closed the other eye and saw their own tenebrous arms shooting out like jets of ink to grip the railing of the fire escape two stories above them. He shut his eyes and with a feeling that was almost like release, he dove backward into the abyss of his own mind, plunging beneath the surface to be swallowed by liquid darkness. 

When they opened both eyes, they saw a three-dimensional world lit up for them in the hallway of their apartment building, welcoming them through the empty window frame like a portal. Their sinewy arms tightened against the resistance of the fire escape, and they swung feet-first into the window opening, their protean form twisting easily between the shards of broken glass. 

They rolled their weight forward into a somersault and landed on their back with a dull thud. As they lay still in the dim light of the hallway, their arms retracted through the window like liquid elastic and came to rest coiled on top of their heaving chest. 

**I caught us,** they said together.

And in the back of their mind, treading water in a dark sea, another voice said, “ _Where the fuck are my elbows?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Pleeease leave a comment; this is my first real fic and I’m pretty new to the fandom so I’d love your...hehe.../feedback/ (see what I did there??)  
> Also I had to ask my own dear husband what it feels like physiologically to have a painful erection, so we can’t let that mortifying conversation be all for naught.


	4. Total Internal Reflection

Venom was lying on the floor of the hallway, staring up at the flickering lights while they steadied their breathing. As they let out a deep exhale, the cracks in the plaster of the ceiling began to shift, rearranging into the patterns of undulating waves. From deep within them, a long-ago memory began to wrap around their senses like a shroud. They were laying prostrate at the bottom of a neighborhood swimming pool, staring at the surface of the water from underneath.

They were trying to understand what it felt like to be a shark. Namely, a great white shark under a very specific set of conditions. They had been playing at the pool with some school friends the weekend after their fifth grade class field trip to the aquarium. The aquarium guide told the class that a great white shark couldn’t rest on the seafloor to sleep because it would die from a lack of oxygen; the act of swimming pushed the water through its gills, and so it could never stop moving. The only time a shark would stop moving was if they were flipped upside down- it would become paralyzed, dazed. Tonic immobility.   


The only reason they remembered the term all those years later is because that day at the pool, their friends spent hours playing Shark Tag- they would stalk around the pool like a predator, trying to “eat” the others, until someone managed to sneak up behind them and flip them upside down while shouting “Tonic immobility!” Then they’d have no choice but to lie there face up, tongue lolling out of their mouth, while they pretended to be hypnotized.

But what if a shark were paralyzed face-up on the ocean floor? What would it see? How would it feel? They needed to investigate this. And so they set about trying to lie down on the bottom of the pool. 

They’d assumed sinking in water would be easy, but even after a whole afternoon of swimming down to the deep end, long after the other boys got bored of their game, they kept trying. And they kept bobbing back to the surface. Finally they realized the trick was to force all the air from their lungs, lie perfectly still, and wait for gravity to take them.

So they had plunged backward from the edge of the pool, and released their breath. The lack of oxygen was a sharp stab in their throat, but they allowed the panic to pass through them, and at last they began to sway downwards like a leaf drifting on the wind. Their eyes followed the bubbles that carried their breath and their fear to the water’s surface. 

The waves were curved in the wrong direction, bulging towards them in little mounds that were the perfect size for them to cup their palm around. The surface of water seemed more solid from this angle, somehow, like there was an invisible membrane stretched over a lumpy roiling mass, like a skin forming on a pot of oatmeal boiling on the stove. They saw the familiar shapes of the clouds and the lifeguard's tower, rippling above them on the other side of the mirror. As they sank deeper, they imagined they were floating above a pool in an upside-down world, and seeing reflections on the surface. Or perhaps it was a window to somewhere else. If they tried to come up for air, would they plunge into the depths of a strange sea on a strange world, sinking upwards forever? They wondered if the beings that live beneath the waves look up towards the sun and think they’re looking down.

As these thoughts were bubbling in their mind, they saw an image forming past the barrier of the water, wavering like a mirage. It was their own reflection--oil-slick skin and white eyes and toothy maw--illuminated by the orange light of the flaming wreckage falling from the sky. The reflection was reaching a black-clawed hand down to that veil between the water and the sky. They reached their own hand up to meet it, and it grabbed them by the wrist, pulling them up through the looking glass.

When they opened their eyes, they saw above them Eddie’s outstretched arm, reaching up towards the dingy plaster of the hallway ceiling, with rivulets of darkness intertwined in his fingers and dripping down the length of his forearm.

Eddie gasped for air, filling lungs that still burned with his memory, and sat up abruptly. He began taking stock of himself: shaking feeling into all his limbs, slicking his tongue over his teeth to make sure they were the correct size, bending his elbows a few times for good measure. He appeared to be right-side-out. The adrenaline from the jump was quickly melting away, taking with it the vague sensation of being underwater. As the last of the memory drained away, he could still feel the water compressing him on all sides, enveloping him, like he was being vacuum sealed. And straining against that tension was his aching, throbbing erection; it had wrestled against his adrenaline and fear, and was still standing.

“Fuck,” he groaned, startled by the sound of his own voice.

With great effort he lifted himself to his feet, brushing little crumbs of glass from his jacket and pant legs. It occurred to him that his neighbor had to have heard him thunk down onto the space between their doors. At least he hadn’t poked his head out to investigate.

“You alright in there, big guy?” Eddie asked as he began fumbling with his key ring, leaning on his new door with his forehead. His landlord had hastily replaced his door the other day, after his last one had been shot through and then kicked down, and he couldn’t remember which of his keys was the new one.

**THAT WAS...DISORIENTING.**

“Yeah. Fuckin’ tell me about it,” Eddie said, squinting at the keys through blurry eyes. Finally he found the right key, and he shouldered the door open, stumbling inside. He had spent that morning taping up the broken window and sweeping up the glass and rubble, but the apartment was still trashed.

**I’M BLURRY AGAIN,** Venom said as Eddie’s eyes were still adjusting to the dim light of the street lamps spilling in through the windows. 

Eddie could feel their shared consciousness phasing back and forth between the veil separating the Self from the Other, like osmosis through a membrane. Like double vision. 

“Yeah, my brain is not having a great time right now,” he said, rubbing his temples. “Is it possible to have a migraine inside your mind? I feel like I’ve been drugged." He kicked off his shoes and ambled over to what was left of his kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. 

In response, Venom unfurled his blood vessels, rippling underneath Eddie’s skin. 

**NO, I’M NOT DETECTING ANYTHING.**

The sudden fluctuation in his blood pressure made his erection twitch, made him lightheaded. Eddie shuddered at the sight of his own flesh pulsating with Venom’s presence, like his blood vessels were thick and turgid with slime. He could feel Venom in the blood that swished through the valves of his heart, in the blood that welled up in his cock, in the blood that flushed his cheeks red with embarrassment.

“God, warn a guy next time!” he said, clutching the sides of his kitchen counter to steady himself. The panic in his voice surprised him. He was hyperventilating

**YOU SAID YOU WERE DRUGGED?**

“It was a figure of speech,” Eddie panted, face screwed up in sudden anguish. His knuckles were white as he gripped the counter.

**IF WE WERE DRUGGED, I COULD JUST NEUTRALIZE THE TOXINS, SO NO HARM COULD COME TO US.**

“Yeah, ok, fair,” he sighed, letting go of the counter and searching for a glass, “It’s just...It’s freaky to think you’re just probing around in my organs without me knowing about it.”

**I CAUGHT YOU ON THE SIDEWALK. KEPT YOU FROM FALLING. WHY IS THIS DIFFERENT?**

**“** Because it’s  _ inside  _ me!” Eddie cried out, his voice filling up the hollows of his apartment like a vapor.

“You shoot an appendage out of my torso and I know that’s  _ you.  _ When you fuck around inside my body, inside my brain, how will I know if there’s any of  _ me  _ left?”

A memory bobbed to the surface of his mind- Venom undulating frantically on the other side of the glass in the MRI chamber, the feeling of his organs rotting from the inside out. An overwhelming sense of fear and betrayal reached up through his memory and grabbed him by the throat. He’d spent the last six months steadily descending into a pit of despair, feeling like he was completely out of control of his own life, of his own mind, and  _ that  _ was his lowest moment yet. He hated feeling so thoroughly and completely powerless. 

Venom recoiled.

**JUST MOLECULES, EDDIE. IS THE OXYGEN IN YOUR LUNGS** **_YOU_ ** **? WHAT ABOUT YOUR SHIT? CARBON, OXYGEN, HYDROGEN. WHAT DOES IT MATTER?**

Eddie slammed the cabinet door shut and padded over to the bathroom with his bare feet, glass of water in hand.

“Don’t you  _ Ship of Theseus  _ me,” he said, holding the cool glass to his forehead, “It’s not my fault I’ve got a healthy fear of being eaten alive.”

**YOU HAVE TRILLIONS OF MICROBES IN YOUR INTESTINES, ON YOUR SKIN, IN YOUR MOUTH. LITTLE SYMBIOTES. ARE YOU ANGRY AT YOUR BACTERIA FOR DIGESTING YOUR FOOD FOR YOU?**

Eddie grumbled. He flicked on the light in the bathroom and tried not to look at the shower curtain twisted in a heap on the floor. He turned towards the sink and grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen out of the medicine cabinet. Over his shoulder in the mirror he could see the crumbling crater in the shower wall, from when Venom first made himself known.

**I’M NOT A PARASITE, EDDIE.**

He looked into his own eyes in the mirror, into Venom’s eyes.

“I know you’re not,” he said heavily. “It just...freaks me out sometimes. The organ failure, and feeling like stranger in my own body, and-”

**IN MY DEFENSE, I GREW ALL OF YOUR ORGANS BACK.**

Eddie laughed. Well, it wasn’t quite a laugh--more of a quick huff of air from his nose--but it was enough to ease some of the tension that hung in that cramped room. Eddie took his medicine and turned away from the mirror.

“I trusted you, though.”

**YOU DID.**

“It’s like you were just using me for parts.”

**I WAS. AT THE TIME. BUT NOT ANYMORE.**

Venom was silent as Eddie switched off the light and headed to bed. He placed the glass of water on his nightstand, then pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the corner of the room.

**TELL YOU WHAT. FROM NOW ON, I’LL STAY OUT OF YOUR BLOOD UNLESS YOU ASK. AND IF YOU GET POISONED BUT DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT, YOU’LL BE SHIT OUT OF LUCK.**

“Don’t be a little bitch about it,” Eddie snorted, unbuckling his pants. He silently cursed his mysterious erection and adjusted his boxers while he shook his pants off.

**I HEALED YOUR LEGS, REMEMBER?** Venom said, glittering across his shins where his mangled bones had once poked through. There wasn’t so much as a scar.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Thanks for that,” he said. He collapsed backward onto the bed and buried his head under a pillow. After a moment he added, “Sorry I got all weird. I just don’t know what’s going on with my head right now.”

There were a few seconds during which the only sounds Eddie could hear were the muffled noises of the city down below, and his own heartbeat throbbing in his eardrums. Even with his eyes closed and a pillow over his face, his head was still spinning. At last Venom spoke again. 

**I’M MORE THAN A PREDATOR, EDDIE. I HEAL.**

Eddie scoffed into his pillow, **“** Forgive me if I don’t want to put my nervous system in the hands of someone who keeps saying ‘I’M BLURRY’.”

**THAT’S FAIR. I’M VERY BLURRY. ABSOLUTELY SHITFACED RIGHT NOW.**

Eddie allowed himself a smile. 

**BUT UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES...I CAN ALTER YOUR BODY IN ANY WAY I NEED TO, TO KEEP US SAFE. I CAN BE ALL THAT YOU NEED. WE CAN BE ALL THAT WE NEED.**

Eddie considered this. It began to feel too warm in the apartment- he could feel the heat on his ears and his bare chest, just under the skin. He thought of Venom in his blood again, wearing him like a sheath. 

“Damn, what’s that even like?” he finally whispered, partially to himself. 

**WHAT’S WHAT LIKE?**

**“** I dunno. The whole thing. Being liquid, I guess? Being inside of someone else’s body?”

**SURELY YOU’VE BEEN INSIDE SOMEONE BEFORE, EDDIE.**

Eddie mentally rolled his eyes. 

“You know what I meant, dipshit. That’s different.”

**IS IT?**

“Yes. It is. Don’t be difficult, man. I’m just trying to understand this whole thing better. I want to understand where you’re coming from. What’s it like to be, I dunno, an alien?”

Venom shrugged. Well, Eddie’s shoulders shrugged, but Eddie wasn’t the one that shrugged them.

**TO ME, YOU’RE THE ALIEN.**

Eddie blinked in the darkness.

“Huh.”

**WHAT?**

“It’s just...I’ve spent this past week trying to come to terms with you being in my head all the time, I haven’t stopped to wonder what it feels like for you to have me in your head.You don’t even have a permanent shape; how do I even wrap my head around that? How do you know who  _ you  _ are if you’re always changing? Like I’ve got the same body today as I did yesterday. Or at least I’m pretty sure I do-”

**JUST MOLECULES, EDDIE.**

“-but that’s got to be weird for you, right?”

**MY RACE HAVE EVOLVED SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS PURPOSE. THIS IS WHAT I KNOW.**

“Have you had a lot of different...hosts...before? Like you personally?”

**I’VE BONDED TO MANY DIFFERENT CREATURES, WITH DIFFERENT SHAPES AND CAPACITIES FOR SAPIENCE.**

“But it’s mostly the same thing every time, or-”

**NO.**

Eddie didn’t know why he was holding his breath.

**THIS...THIS TIME FEELS DIFFERENT, SOMEHOW.**

Eddie let out his breath and found that he was suddenly and unbearably hot. He felt the sense of hyper-awareness return to him- the predators’ instinct from before. But instead of noticing every potential threat (or potential meal) in a crowd, his attention was focused solely on every cell of his own body. He could feel beads of sweat prickling around his hairline, a fever creeping up the back of his neck, a web of capillaries blushing in his inner thighs, his pupils dilating. And was he imagining things, or could he smell his own hormones?

**HEY MAN. YOU GOOD? ARE YOU BLURRY?**

Eddie draped a forearm over the pillow that covered his face, and he groaned, and he kicked the covers off the bed. Nothing helped.

“I dunno. I just feel really weird all of a sudden. I don’t know if it’s the Double Drunk, or if I ate something bad, or if I’m getting sick.”

**YOU WANT ME TO CHECK?**

Eddie didn’t answer. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, head swimming. Why was he afraid? What was he afraid of?

**YOU CAN COME TOO, IF YOU WANT.**

**“** Wait, what?” Eddie asked.

**I’LL JUST SCAN YOUR VITALS, NORMALIZE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE, EASE THE DOUBLE DRUNK. BUT I CAN LINK WITH YOU, SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT I'M DOING. MAKE SURE I DON’T EAT YOUR BLOOD. SAID I WOULDN’T DO IT UNLESS YOU ASKED.**

“Will that even work?”

**FUCK IF I KNOW. WANNA FIND OUT?**

Eddie sat up slowly, propping up a pillow behind him. He scooted backward to lean against the wall, but suddenly he was sitting backwards on the edge of the deep end of the pool, eager to let go. 

“Alright,” he said, and waited.   


**LET ME JUST... I’M GOING TO PATCH YOU INTO MY PERCEPTION. HOLD ON.**

Eddie was waiting for something to happen, but wasn’t sure what it would feel like, or if he would recognize it. He’d never had to  _ do  _ anything before; Venom just enveloped him, and then they were Venom together. But this time he tried to feel around in the inner world until he found the boundary between Self and Other. He tried to breathe slowly and deliberately, noticing every aspect of the sensation.

He took a sharp breath through his nose, and the air felt cold and fast. He could visualize the currents of his breath like a vortex smoke in his sinus cavity. He could see it clear as day, like a cross section of the skull in a doctor’s office, but he wasn’t seeing the inside of his skull with his eyes. He was there, in cells, in the breath. 

The breath shot through his brain an electrical current, like a marionette wire threaded up through his nostrils and affixed to the crown of his skull. His head lolled forward in slow motion, sliding down the cold marionette wire that pierced him like an ice pick. And then the breath sank into his lungs, thick as treacle, dragging his whole body down with the gravity of its burning. He fixated on this feeling, trying to crystallize it so that he could remember it later. He wanted to remember what it felt like. He rolled the phrase “marionette wire” around in his head, knowing that if he didn’t grasp tightly to it, the memory of the sensation would slip through his fingers like sand through a sieve.

His tongue was swollen in his mouth. He could feel the friction of every taste bud rasping across the ridges of his palate. His eardrums were thick and throbbing. 

He breathed in again. The air was clear and sharp as seawater, but thick as slime. It oozed from his mouth with each exhale, lacing across his skin like a web of electricity. The darkness of it was blooming within him- filling up the negative space of his lungs like the water of the womb.

And then the darkness wasn’t inside him but around him, swelling outward into infinity like mercury vapor. Like the recurring nightmare he used to have after that childhood trip to the aquarium, after that eternity at the bottom of the swimming pool- he’d be lost in an abyss of murky water, and everywhere around him were Shapes hanging wordlessly in the water column in all dimensions, like the infinite reflections in the expanse of two mirrors facing each other. Great nameless things that his eyes could never focus on, the only light being a dim glow that illuminated just enough of the water to see that the Shapes seemed to be endless, and the haze of the water tricked his vision, so that he couldn’t tell how far away they were from him, or how big they were, or which direction was up. He tried to swim to the surface, but his arms and legs were struggling in slow motion, like the water was thick as honey. The pressure began to envelop him, and he exhaled, watching the bubbles dance upward as he sank deeper into the living abyss.

He was inside the darkness, just like the alveoli is suspended inside the dark sponge of lung tissue, and the lungs are enveloped in the rib cage, and the rib cage is surrounded by the shark that swallows it whole, and the shark is inside a million-gallon aquarium tank, and the tank is on a rock in a solar system in a galaxy in a void in a sea of stars. Each one of those stars was a memory, a thought, a neuron, lighting up with fireworks of sensation.

The starlight pressed its thumbs into his eyelids, squeezing until his vision split apart- double images overlapping each other, but one skewed just a little to the left. The pressure was causing his eardrums to flutter. He was certain his skull was going to pop. The contents of his brain case were already leaking out through his tear ducts. 

Inside the jelly of his left eyeball, his cone cells exploded in a jolt of RED, like the flashbulb of an old-timey camera. A beat later, his right eye stabbed BLUE like the ice of a concussion, and the red light and blue light reverberated in the kaleidoscope of his mind’s eye, like two mirrors facing. 

And then images began to flicker in his inner eye like a flip book. Every image was a snapshot of a memory--a scene from a movie or a familiar smell or the shape of an emotion--all overlapping to construct a new meaning. Venom was using his memories to communicate with him, there in that wordless place. Like one of those neural network algorithms that takes random data and composites it into something new. Both novel and familiar, a single thing yet many things. Except instead of an image, it was a feeling. A story. An Other, making himself known.

And then he was the darkness. He pooled into the fluid of his host’s brain, and memories sparkled with electricity in his path. He danced over the surface of the grey matter, cradling it in his tendrils, stroking the neurons until they opened up for him, teasing out their neurotransmitters like he was coaxing pleasure from a lover.

  
From a lover? _Lover._ That term wasn’t native to his hive-mind. The neurotransmitter had given him that word. Well, not the word exactly, but the flavor of the emotion behind the word, and the meaning of the word had come from one of the memories that crackled beneath his touch. He sank deeper into the brain and perceived the body all at once. Elevated heartbeat, blood filling the genitals, dilated pupils... 

This wasn’t a fever.

This wasn’t Double Drunk. 

This was arousal, pure and simple. 

He quickly cross-referenced his host’s memories just in case, but it only confirmed his suspicion. It couldn’t be anything else. His whole being thrilled with the truth of it, which surprised him. The greater surprise was when his thrill sparked into the cells surrounding him, sending a tingle into his host’s brain, down his spine, and into every cell of his body. A soft moan escaped his host’s lips. 

The sudden sound roared through the silence, launching him up from that wordless place and back into the outer world. He blinked his eyes open. 

He sat slumped against his headboard, drenched in sweat, with his hand wrapped around his cock, mid-jerk. Dancing across his skin was the glittering black of liquid lace.

“Holy shit,” he said in a gravelly voice.

**I DIDN’T DO THAT, I SWEAR. NOT ON PURPOSE,** said Venom, retracting.

**I** **WASN’T TRYING TO PUPPET YOU OR-**

“No, no...I think I’m-” Eddie mumbled, like he was still dreaming, “I didn’t think...It’s not your fault. It’s ok. Just- Was I…? Shit. Fuck. What the fuck.”

**I’M... SORRY.**

Venom retreated all his tendrils back into Eddie’s chest, and it felt as though the life force was being drained from his body, like a lover pulling their face away after a kiss. How could he lean forward into someone who was sinking into his own body?

“ _ I’m  _ sorry! Shit, what am I, some kind of pervert? Oh, God...Can you, like, not look at me for a second? Is that even possible? Fuck. Now I made it weird, and you’re uncomfortable, and I’m uncomfortable, and-”

Venom unfurled a little. 

**YOUR BODY WENT ON AUTOPILOT,** Venom said cautiously.  **DON’T SWEAT IT.**

Eddie was groaning into his left hand, but he hadn’t removed his right hand from his underwear. Must not be  _ too _ uncomfortable, then. Venom was bewildered, intrigued, and still afraid that he’d somehow betrayed Eddie’s trust again. But he was also an insufferable bastard.

**GUESS YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS REALLY NEEDED...TO TICKLE THE PICKLE.**

Eddie snorted, and the warmth of his laughter spread Venom back out into his veins. His hips rocked pleadingly of their own volition, pumping his cock into his hand. But it was also Venom’s hand, wasn’t it? His whole body convulsed with electricity at the thought, and Venom echoed with a ripple that radiated from his chest.

“Is that…” Eddie faltered, “Is that always what it feels like? To be in my head? That...otherworldy?”

**ONLY WHEN I’M REALLY** **_REALLY_ ** **DEEP INSIDE YOU,** said Venom, amused.

Eddie quivered like jelly.

“Now you’re taunting me,” he panted.

**BUT YOU LIKE IT, DON’T YOU?** Venom purred,  **WHEN I PUSH YOUR BUTTONS.**

Venom drew a tentative stroke through his host’s amygdala, and Eddie’s back arched reflexively.

“Motherfucker,” Eddie moaned.

**YOUR HUMAN SEXUAL INSTINCTS ARE SO STRANGE.**

“Look, if I were in full conscious control of my body, this is the last thing I’d be doing-”

**UH-HUH.**

“-but, uh, my body is doing it’s own thing, so we’re stuck here I guess. God, just please stop making it weird. If you’re gonna be weird then just knock me unconscious. Actually, could you just kill me right now, please? Thanks.”

**EDDIE, THIS WILL NEVER NOT BE WEIRD.**

“Just let me get this over with. So I can go to sleep.”

But Eddie’s hand was still. Venom’s teasing was bad, but his silence was worse. Now it felt even more like Eddie was being watched, analyzed. Like a specimen.

**WHY ARE YOU EVEN AROUSED? IT’S BEEN OVER AN HOUR SINCE YOU KISSED MELISSA.**

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know!” 

**IF THIS PERSISTS FOR ANOTHER THREE HOURS, YOU SHOULD SEE A DOCTOR. DO YOU THINK DAN'S STILL AWAKE?**

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, jolted to alertness at the thought of Dan examining him in his current state. God, the embarrassment of it all. His cock twitched, and he dug his heels into his bedsheets.

**OH, IS THAT WHAT DOES IT FOR YOU? SHAME?**

“Get out of my head!”

**IT TURNS YOU ON THOUGH, DOESN’T I?**

"We're not having this conversation right now."

**YOU LIIIIIIIIKE IT.**

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

Eddie screwed his eyes shut and tried again to finish masturbating as quickly as possible, while trying not to think about his internal voyeur. But he couldn’t  _ not _ think about Venom, because to exist was to  _ be  _ Venom.

**YOU CAN’T AVOID ME, EDDIE. I’M ALREADY INSIDE OF YOU.**

Eddie’s face twisted up in pain or pleasure or both, and tears started streaming down his face.

“C’mon, man, this is humiliating! I don’t know what’s going on, and I just feel powerless here, and I want it to be over!” Eddie reached behind his back for his pillow, shoved it onto his crotch, and curled up around it in the fetal position, trembling.

**OH.**

**OH.**

**TOO FAR?**

“No shit, Sherlock!" Eddie shouted, wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist. "While you’re digging around in my memories, maybe find one labeled ‘boundaries’.”

Venomed tried to untangle Eddie’s emotions by scent. There was pleasure, but also...disgust? Yes, disgust, as well as shame, anger, pain. And there was fear, certainly. The taste of fear was unmistakable. This shook Venom to attention. Fear is the poison of a true symbiotic bond. All mischief melted away, and all he wanted was to cradle Eddie’s frantic heart in his hands. Of course he’s afraid. Of course he’s disgusted. How could he not be? He’d seen enough of the human brain to know what a monster looked like.

Eddie slid out of bed, kicked all the garbage away from the side of his bed, and laid face down on the floor. His hands were at his sides, and his nose was smooshed directly into the rug.

**WHAT ARE YOU-**

**“** Trying not to have a panic attack,” said Eddie, his face muffled by the floor.

**BUT WHY DOES THAT-**

“Dunno man, sometimes you just gotta lay on the ground.”

Venom slithered out of Eddie’s body and puddled beside him on the dirty floor boards. He would let Eddie have privacy for this, if that’s what he wanted. Venom didn’t quite understand that human need for bodily autonomy, but if his presence was causing Eddie distress, he’d do the best he could to give him some space in his own mind. Or at the very least, the illusion of it. He coagulated into a humanoid shape, sprawled on his back with clawed hands folded neatly on his chest. Like a corpse in repose. 

Eddie turned his head slightly and raised an eyebrow. 

“What are  _ you  _ doing?”

Venom wasn’t sure he understood it himself. He shuffled through Eddie’s memories until he found one with the right flavor of emotions and intentions. There was a pinprick in Eddie’s mind, and then Venom spoke.

**YOUR HOOK SHOT KNOCKED YOU UNCONSCIOUS, SO I LAID DOWN NEXT TO YOU SO EVERYONE WOULD THINK WE WERE CHILLIN’.**

Eddie chuckled softly, but his throat was soon choked with dry sobs. 

Venom reached behind him to the nightstand and retrieved the glass of water, setting it down beside Eddie’s head.

**YOU’LL WANT TO SIT UP TO DRINK THIS. UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO TURN INTO A STRAW.**

Eddie gave Venom a Look, but did as he was told. He drank the last of it and held the empty glass to his cheeks and forehead before laying back down.

Venom was silent beside him. There was no rising and fall of his chest- he didn’t have lungs, after all. There was no body heat radiating from him, yet Eddie was still warmed by his presence. 

**SORRY** , Venom said at last. 

Eddie breathed. ****

"Yeah. S'okay."

**I WASN'T TRYING TO FUCK WITH YOUR BRAIN, BEFORE. WHEN WE WERE LINKED.**

"I know. I know it wasn't on purpose."

**THINK I ATE THE WRONG NEUROTRANSMITTER. TRIGGERED A MOOD SWING.**

Eddie rolled his eyes. 

"This isn't a mood swing! It was all just…overwhelming, I guess?” He rolled onto his side, facing Venom. He still wasn’t used to looking at him, and he fought back the urge to recoil from the sight of the dark sinewy body that was both as dreadful and familiar as his own reflection.

**DIDN’T KNOW IT WOULD HURT.**

Eddie sighed. 

“Look, I didn't _hate_ it …”

Venom’s chest trembled with silent laughter.

“It’s like, I remember the first time I had alcohol, back when I was fifteen or so. I thought it tasted really weird but I couldn’t tell if I liked it or not. So I kept sipping it, trying to figure it out. And before I knew it, the bottle was empty, and I was wasted, and I was miserable, and I barfed all over a pool table.”

Venom nodded sagely, and considered this.

**YES, I UNDERSTAND. I'M AN EXPERT AT ALCOHOL NOW.**

Eddie smiled. It was strange to hear Venom’s voice on the _outside_ of his body, to watch his obscene mouth form itself around the words, to see his tongue flicker behind his teeth. His shining eyes appeared to be closed, which Eddie thought was strange because he wasn’t sure if Venom even had proper eyelids. Either way, It was an almost human expression.

Eddie suddenly felt very empty. As if all the blood in his body had spilled out onto the rug beside him. He remembered what it felt like to be inside his own mind, sharing in Venom’s perception as he tended to his neurons like flowers in a garden. He couldn’t recall the last time he thought of his own mind or body with anything other than self-loathing. He was an exceptional fuck-up. Selfish, entitled, childish, couldn’t hold a job, could barely feed himself, pushed away everyone he’d ever cared about...

Well, not everyone. 

Venom was still there, watching over him out of the corner of his mind like a sentinel. He lifted his eyes up to Venom as if seeing him for the first time. If he concentrated, he could feel Venom monitoring him, keeping tabs on his vitals in case he began to panic again. His heart quickened at the thought. 

Venom’s eyes snapped open and he turned to meet Eddie’s gaze. 

**YOU GOOD?**

Eddie nodded wordlessly. Venom searched his face for any sign of distress.

**HOW’S YOUR...SITUATION?**

“Well my dick hurts, if that’s what you want to know. Thanks for asking.”

**YOU’RE WELCOME.**

Eddie rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.

**COULD BE WORSE, THOUGH.**

“You think?”

**COULD'VE HAPPENED WITH MELISSA.**

Eddie buried his face in his hands and groaned so loud it was almost a scream.

“God, you’re right! Thank fuck I’m not curled up on Melissa’s floor with a semi, talking to myself and crying. What a loser.”

**WE’RE BOTH LOSERS.**

“We’re two losers stacked in a trenchcoat, pretending to be one loser.”

**INFINITE RECURSIVE RUSSIAN NESTING DOLL OF LOSERS.**

“Losers all the way down.”

**TWO LOSERS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE.**

“Maybe we’re the same loser.”

Eddie gave Venom a lopsided grin. Venom gave him a smile that wrapped nearly all the way around his head, dripping with rows of needle sharp teeth. Like shark’s teeth. Eddie winced, ever so slightly, at the site of them.

**YOU SCARED, EDDIE?**

“Of course, I’m not an idiot. My hindbrain sees your shark teeth and absolutely loses it. Blame evolution. Blame that trip to the aquarium when I was ten.”

**LIAR.**

Eddie narrowed his eyes. He gave Venom a playful shove, but strands of darkness stuck to his hand, trailing after him like a tether when he tried to pull his hand away. Venom rolled over on his side to face him, to mirror him.

**I REMEMBER THE AQUARIUM, AND THE POOL. I WAS THERE WITH YOU, IN YOUR MEMORIES. YOU WEREN’T SCARED OF THE SHARK. YOU WANTED TO BE THE SHARK.**

“I  _ was  _ afraid of the shark. Terrified. But I wanted to see through its eyes, so I could understand it.” ****

**THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU A GOOD REPORTER,** said Venom, managing to look smug while given him a compliment. 

With a gulp, Eddie reached his hand across the great expanse between them, and placed it on Venom’s chest, where Venom’s heart might be, if he had one. The strands of darkness pulled him in.

“I think...I wanted to know what it felt like, to be so Other than what I am, to be on the other side of that mirror world. I still do.”

He sank his fingers smoothly into Venom’s mass like he was dipping his hands in cool water. In his own chest, on the other side of the portal, he could feel the specter of his own fingertips phasing through the muscles of his heart like smoke. He and Venom trembled in the same moment, in the same space. They really weren’t two separate bodies, were they? No, that was an illusion. They were always going to be fused together. Irrevocably, inexorably, ineffably, together.

Venom suddenly tightened his mass around Eddie’s hand, locking it in place.

**WELL THEN,** he said, rolling over on top of Eddie and melting into him, pinning him down from the inside out. Eddie’s brain was a constellation of electricity. 

**TONIC IMMOBILITY.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Total internal reflection (TIR) is the optical phenomenon in which the surface of the water... when viewed from below the water level, reflects the underwater scene like a mirror, with no loss of brightness" -Wikipedia


	5. Two Mirrors Facing

Eddie couldn’t move.

That’s what tonic immobility was all about, right? Not being able to move. Paralyzed. Powerless.

He’d asked for this, hadn’t he? Practically invited it. And it’s not like he didn’t trust Venom. Of course he did, especially now. But that didn’t stop a wave of fear from rippling over him. He could taste it, acrid on his tongue. 

**BE STILL,** Venom said from within him, as though he had a choice. He was at the mercy of solar tides and cosmic forces he couldn’t comprehend. He wanted to close his eyes but he found that he didn’t have eyes anymore. He was just raw _perception_ clinging to a lifeless asteroid, alone in a sea of stars, writhing desperately inside a sealed canister. Exposed to the burning air, flayed open without so much as a skin to shield him, separated from his hive mind. A once-unstoppable predator reduced to a quivering mess. Powerless as a shark flipped over on its back. Powerless as a man stripped of his job, his home, his lover. Utterly alone.

But he wasn’t alone, was he? No, they were Venom, of course, even in their own memories. They also _would_ be Venom. So, naturally they always _had_ been Venom- a singularity of truth stretched out in all directions across time itself. The irresistible truth of _they_ coagulated within the memory, until it was staring Eddie in the face like a reflection in a mirror, bursting through the glass to tackle him to the ground. And suddenly there was darkness, and knowledge deep inside them that they’d never be alone again.

Eddie opened his eyes and found he was being lowered gently onto his bed by thick black tethers. 

“Thank you,” he rasped, “for, uh...taking care of me, I guess. And, uh...for showing me your memories.”

 **_OUR_ ** **MEMORIES,** said Venom, the black tethers coiling around Eddie’s biceps, **AND WE HAVE NOT FINISHED YET.**

“No?”

**JUST GETTING YOU...COMFORTABLE.**

Eddie gulped, tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but found he couldn’t quite remember how to send signals to his limbs. The taste of fear returned to his tongue, prickled at the back of his neck.

**YOU ARE AFRAID?**

“Yes.”

**TELL ME WHY.**

Eddie’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“Well, uh...if you’re going to...to “patch me in” to your mind again...Well. It was kinda like sensory overload before. Really freaked me out. Dunno if I can take it.”

**OH, I THINK YOU CAN TAKE FAR MORE THAN THAT.**

The thick cords around Eddie’s biceps constricted, and slowly dragged his arms up over his head. His cock twitched in earnest, and his hips arched upwards. He strained weakly against the bonds, but Venom was wrapped tight around his wrists. Eddie squirmed under the flat glare of the ceiling, his vulnerability suddenly unbearable.

“Is all this-” he panted, “-really necessary? For the mind-meld thing? God, I swear I won’t...fuckin’...touch myself again. You don’t have to tie me up. C’mon man, i haven’t been punished for jerking off since...since fuckin’ Catholic school. Please tell me you’re not going to slap the back of my knuckles with a ruler. Seriously though, what the fuck.”

Venom manifested a head and shoulders and arms, rising up from Eddie’s chest to loom over him.

**WHAT ELSE ARE YOU AFRAID OF?**

Eddie grunted and mustered up enough strength to turn his face away.

**ARE YOU EMBARRASSED?**

Eddie’s ears turned red, and he felt a familiar probing sensation in his mind.

 **ARE YOU AFRAID OF YOUR ERECTION?** Venom asked, tucking a massive clawed finger beneath Eddie’s chin and tilting his face back to meet his gaze.

“No!” Eddie hissed, “I- I can’t- I just! Dammit!” he tried to squirm away again, but Venom was all but straddling him, forcing Eddie to look him in the eye. There was no hiding, no secret place in the subconscious where Eddie could lock himself away in. There was only Venom’s gaze, penetrating into every fiber of his being, and the feeling that he was somehow flayed open and laid bare to the stinging air in his apartment, raw as the new skin beneath a scab that’s been ripped off. All the while, he felt his cock straining against the fabric of his boxers. There was no use in lying. Not anymore.

**THERE IS NO NEED TO SUPPRESS YOUR INSTINCTS.**

“I’m ashamed, ok!” Eddie sighed, “You happy now? Fuck. I feel pathetic. And weak. Like my subconscious is like, broken or some shit. I didn’t want to have to fuckin’...subject you to some gross human bodily function, knowing you can’t just go somewhere else. It feels gross. _I_ feel gross!”

Venom somehow recoiled a few inches backward in surprise, shaking his head. 

**YOU...WOW. YOU ARE AN IDIOT.**

“Hey!” Now it was Eddie’s turn to look taken aback.

 **YOUR BODY IS NOT GROSS. IT’S MY** **_HOME_ ** **. THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE I’D RATHER BE THAN RIGHT HERE.**

Eddie rolled his eyes, but Venom’s claw tucked into the soft flesh under his chin prevented him from looking away again.

“What kind of creep tries to get off in front of someone who can’t leave?”

**I AM NOT THE ONE TIED UP.**

“God, I hate that you have to see me like this.”

Venom lowered his head, so close that his teeth were just barely grazing Eddie’s jugular, his voice like the purr of a predator.

 **OH, EDDIE. I** **_LOVE_ ** **SEEING YOU LIKE THIS.**

“Wait, hold on,” Eddie said in a new tone of voice, “Are you trying to seduce me?”

Venom pulled back his head and blinked at him vacantly for a moment, his grip on Eddie’s wrists going slack as his confusion rolled over in his mind.

**WAS THAT NOT...APPARENT?**

Eddie managed to pull his arms free and cover his face with his hands.

“Oh my god,” he kept saying, over and over. His shoulders were trembling. His heart rate was elevated. His whole torso was blooming red.

 **WHAT’S WRONG? TELL ME,** Venom growled, but as Eddie drew his hands away, Venom saw that his face was pink with silent laughter.

“This whole time-” he gasped, “I thought you were just being an asshole!”

 **ARE YOU KIDDING ME?** Venom’s face was screwed up into the most human expression Eddie had ever seen it display- a look of absolute “WTF?”

“No, I _for real_ thought this was a sick joke,” Eddie said, barely able to breathe through his laughter, “I thought you were just gonna show me what it felt like...you know, to be you. Like before. Other side of the mirror. And I felt like such a sicko for my body, you know, _reacting_ while you were stuck with me! I thought you were poking fun of my hard-on just to make me feel guilty about it! But this whole time-” Eddie doubled over with laughter, “- _you_ were the sicko!”

Venom had completely returned control to Eddie’s limbs, allowing him to sit up on his own, but Eddie was struggling to steady himself.

 **HOW ARE YOU SUCH A DUMBASS?** Venom said, fondness tinging his incredulity.

Eddie shook his head, and managed to choke out “I don’t know!” before another spasm of silent laughter strangled his cry of, “I’m bad at context clues! Why do you think I have to write everything down!”

At this, Venom began to laugh as well, with a sound like bubbling tar. He sank back down into Eddie’s chest, to feel the tension drain from the muscles, to feel Eddie’s laughter resonate in his lungs. The two of them sank back down into the pillows until the laughter became easy chuckles punctuated by the silent glow of aching cheeks.

Finally Eddie spoke again, a smile still in his voice.

“No fuckin shit, huh?” 

**NO SHIT.**

Eddie chuckled.

“But why, though?”

Venom shrugged within him.

**I FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL. I DESIRE WHAT YOU DESIRE.**

“Oh, so you’re tellin’ me it’s _my_ fault?”

**YOU WERE CRAVING SEXUAL RELEASE. THEREFORE, SO WAS I.**

Venom bubbled to the surface of Eddie’s chest and spread warmly over his skin. Eddie absently reached down to rest his hand in the puddle. He looked down and saw that in all the laughter, his erection had flagged considerably. Well that was something to be thankful for, at least.

“Does your, uh...species...even, I don’t know, have a sex drive?” Eddie said breathlessly.

**NO.**

“I didn’t think so,” Eddie chuckled, and grasped a handful of Venom’s liquid mass to his chest, “Fuckin’ weirdo.”

 **BUT** **_YOU_ ** **DO.**

Eddie scoffed. “So you’re telling me you’ve never even had sex before, and you were just planning to pigyyback off my orgasm the same way you got drunk?” He clicked his teeth in mock disappointment.

**YOU’RE FORGETTING: DOUBLE DRUNK, DOUBLE ORGASM. FEEDBACK LOOP.**

Eddie considered this. 

He scratched his chin.

He certainly hadn’t thought of this possibility before. Well, alright, technically he _had_ suffered a few intrusive thoughts lately- thoughts that featured him tied up in silky black ropes that pulsated with living electricity. But he had shamed himself for those thoughts- convinced he was disgusting and broken and wrong for wanting to _use_ Venom in that way, for his own sexual gratification. And that made him feel like a monster. But it hadn’t occurred to him that Venom might not be unwilling. Hadn’t occurred to him that being a monster might not be so bad. He tried to shake some sense back into his head.

He was suddenly _starving._

He hopped up from bed, thankfully unhindered, and power-walked into the kitchen to look for a snack.

“I’m hungry. Do you want anything?” Eddie asked, fanning himself with his hands. He didn’t care if it was obvious he was changing the subject.

 **ALWAYS,** Venom purred, **YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE.** Most of his visible mass was coiled around Eddie’s biceps once again, oozing up from between Eddie’s shoulder blades, with his head resting heavily on Eddie’s right shoulder. He was buzzing faintly with impatience, but he was willing to wait for _anything_ if snacks were on the table.

“Do I, though? Because apparently you get turned on, and I sure as fuck didn’t know that.”

**THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE A DUMBASS.**

“Watch it,” Eddie said, swatting at Venom over his shoulder with a dishtowel. This was normal, right? The banter? This was a thing they’d always done. Pick at each other. There’s nothing strange to think about now; they were just two friends getting a midnight snack after one of them tried to seduce the other, and the other had a panic attack about it. All they needed was some chocolate, and everything would be back to normal. Eddie was barely even hard anymore. Barely.

**YOU GET DRUNK, I GET DRUNK. YOU GET SEXUALLY FRUSTRATED, SO DO I. IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF A LEAP.**

Eddie dug through his cupboard until he had found a package of stale chocolate chips. It would have to do.

“You don’t even have genitals!” Eddie sighed in disbelief, tearing at the bag with his teeth.

 **SURE I DO,** Venom purred, strands of him snaking down Eddie’s chest, towards the waistband of his boxers, **WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE. MI BODY ES SU BODY.**

Eddie swatted the tendril away, squirming. 

“More like ‘mi body es su casa.’ God, this is so fuckin’ weird,” he breathed, shaking a handful of chocolates into his open palm. Darkness spilled from his fingertips, enveloped the chocolate, and disappeared back into Eddie’s now-empty hand.

“God, I haven’t rubbed one out all week because I’ve been too mortified! And I didn’t want you heckling me! Somehow, this is worse. This is so much worse.”

**I DON’T THINK THAT’S THE REASON.**

“Oh yeah, wise guy?” Eddie tried again for some chocolate chips, but Venom snatched the bag away.

**I THINK YOU DID NOT WANT TO ADMIT TO YOURSELF THAT YOU WANTED IT. BUT YOU CANNOT LIE TO YOURSELF. YOU CANNOT LIE TO ME.**

Eddie’s heart pounded in his ears, and his belly fluttered with adrenaline and fear. Was it fear? Fear of being found out, exposed, laid bare. Fear of being forced to face the parts of himself that still disgusted him. Fear of being examined. Fear of being weighed and measured, and found wanting. He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. There was also a delicious sort of fear bubbling to the surface. A fear of sharp teeth in his own mouth and the taste of blood on his tongue.

This was all so much, too much. He closed his eyes to drown out the static inside his head. Every sound was suddenly too loud- the rustle of the plastic bag, the sticky gnashing of Venom’s razor teeth beside his ear as he munched on chocolate chips, the hum of the refrigerator, the wail of a car alarm down the street. Strange and familiar all at once. Distant and pressing. The worn wooden floorboards felt cool and slightly tacky beneath his bare feet, and he was gripped by the urge to lay down on the floor again, to press his cheek to something cool and solid. But he stood his ground, swallowed hard, and held his hands out in supplication with a heavy sigh. Venom’s head oozed down from Eddie’s shoulder and unfurled the long pink tongue into Eddie’s hands, depositing a small treasure of chocolate chips. 

**TECHNICALLY,** Venom said, his head doubling back along the length of its tendril and draping over Eddie’s shoulders like a boa constrictor, **IT WOULD BE RUDE OF YOU TO DENY ME SEXUAL RELEASE.**

Eddie felt a thick coil of Venom snake around his neck, grazing against the stubble of his face. Cool and solid. He couldn’t help but lean his cheek into it as he poured the chocolate chips into his mouth with a trembling hand.

“Oh, and how do you come to that conclusion?” Eddie asked. There was still nervous laughter in his cheeks but his voice was beginning to falter. 

**IF YOU TOLD A HOUSE GUEST THEY WERE NOT ALLOWED TO ORGASM WHILE THEY WERE STAYING WITH YOU, YOU WOULD BE A PRETTY SHITTY HOST.**

Eddie snorted with laughter, nearly choking on the sweet burn of the chocolate sticking in his throat, and he felt the heat of it radiating into the pit of his stomach. He nudged Venom’s mass from around his shoulders as he rolled his eyes. Venom’s face dissolved into darkness, and his mass sank down Eddie’s arms in little squiggles, like liquid lightning.

“Yeah, well this isn’t just my apartment we’re talking about; it’s my body. So I think there’s a difference,” Eddie smiled. He snatched the bag of chocolate back from one of Venom’s tendrils.

 **OUR BODY,** Venom said from within Eddie’s mind, as a tendril whipped out to steal the bag from Eddie’s hand. Eddie swiped it away just as quickly.

“Well then, I guess in your metaphor, that’d make you a roommate instead of a guest,” Eddie said, leaning back onto the counter with his elbows, trying to look nonchalant.

“Trust me,” he mumbled around another mouthful of chocolate, “I’ve had plenty of roommates, and if I’d had the power to force them not to jerk off, I’d’ve done it in a heartbeat.”

 **BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE THAT POWER, DO YOU?** Venom growled from behind him, drawing his elbows in and snapping tight around his wrists once more, spilling a few chocolate chips onto the counter in his process. Eddie stumbled to keep his footing, but Venom didn’t let him fall. He was held fast to the counter. He gulped. His cock stood to attention immediately.

**YOU COULDN’T STOP ME IF YOU TRIED.**

Eddie stared ahead resolute, jaw clenched, as Venom’s head snaked around to face him, looming over him. Venom easily plucked the bag of chocolate from Eddie’s tied hands, and poured the remainder of it into his gaping maw. In the darkness, the thick syrup of chocolate and saliva on Venom’s teeth looked like fresh blood. Eddie’s hips bucked just slightly, and he told himself he was only struggling against the bonds.

**BUT YOU DO NOT WANT ME TO STOP, DO YOU?**

Venom collected a few stray chocolates from the counter and held them up to Eddie’s lips with an outstretched tendril, the way one might offer food to a tied-up animal.

Eddie was trembling with primal fear and arousal mingled together, and his cheeks burned with the humiliation. A chorus of _why?_ swam in his head, chased around by refrains of _why not?_ Was Venom, what, _humoring_ him? Trying to get a rise out of him, trying to get him off, as what- as a favor? As a joke? This was a sentient goo with no apparent genitals or method of sexual reproduction Eddie could discern, and more than that, it was someone who had intimate knowledge of just how much of a fuck-up Eddie was. What could Venom possibly _want_ with him?

He glanced up at Venom, attempting to look defiant, but his vision swam and shifted with that _blurry_ feeling until he was seeing out of Venom’s eyes.

What he saw was his host, arms bound so tightly behind him--elbows together, shoulders forced back--that his chest was puffed out, like a pinup model, heart thumping heavy just beneath the surface. The dim light of the street lamps lit up the human’s tattooed chest with a warm glow, and sparkled in the wetness of his lips. His host’s eyes were desperate and pleading, yet proud and strong, and he was swollen with need. His host, his beautiful _beautiful_ host, vulnerable and exposed to the night air, held in his mercy. All trussed up like an animal, like a sacrifice on an altar. All red and warm and sweet and open for him, like the viscera of a fresh kill. He could taste his host’s fear and desire, stoking his insatiable hunger with just the faintest sample of pure pleasure. It was intoxicating. What was “desire,” for a sexless alien race who existed solely to conquer and control? What else could it be, but the scent of a prey that’s _begging_ to be devoured, a host that’s _inviting_ his conquest? He was _hungry_ in a way he’d never been hungry before. And in that moment, waiting in agony for his host to answer him, wanting to be wanted, begging to be begged for, he was powerless.

 **DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP?** Venom repeated, a little of the growl gone from his voice. 

The air was still, but for the sound of heavy breathing, and the flickering buzz of the light above the stove, and the faint drip of Eddie’s sweat falling onto his chest.

At last Eddie parted his lips to accept the offered chocolate, and felt the cool electricity of the dark tendril brush against his lips. He found he had a sudden urge to wrap his lips around it, to bite it, to know what it would feel like to swell in his mouth; as the tendril drew away, he leaned after it, straining against his bonds. He looked up to meet Venom’s gaze and saw that toothy black face pulled into a look of desperation.

“No,” Eddie said heavily, clearing his throat as the chocolate still dissolved on his tongue, “No, by all means, don't stop on my account.”

Venom’s mass coiled around Eddie’s bare chest, the symbiote’s head nuzzling the side of Eddie’s cheek. Eddie imagined Venom would be breathing heavily beside his ear, if Venom had breath, or lungs, for that matter.

 **YOU THINK YOU’RE SO SMOOTH,** he said, razor teeth tickling the pulse point on Eddie’s neck. 

A smirk tugged at the corner of Eddie’s mouth as he tilted his head ever so slightly, to give Venom greater access to his throat. A shiver rippled through Venom at the invitation, and Eddie felt an echo of that pleasure as goosebumps pricking up across his skin.

“What, you think you could do any better?” he asked, trying to sound cool, but his voice was hitched and trembling. 

Venom drew his face back again, to look Eddie in the eye once more.

 **OOH, EDDIE,** he crooned, turning over their memories from the bar a few hours prior, **DO YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE AN ALIEN LIFE FORM WITH ME?**

Eddie chuckled and pressed his forehead to Venom’s face, right between those glassy white eyes.

“Jackass,” he said breathlessly, and then he kissed his Other.

It was different than the kiss in the forest had been, partly because Eddie’s hands were tied so that he couldn’t grab desperately at Venom’s mass, pulling him in. It was also different because Anne wasn’t there to give Venom shape, but Eddie quickly pushed that thought out of his mind. He didn’t want to think about Anne. All he wanted to think about was the thick chocolate heat of the tongue in his throat, the warmth of the tendrils that coalesced into hands for no other purpose than to run fingers through his hair and grip him tightly by the nape of his neck. Thick cables of Venom sprouted up from Eddie’s thighs, lashed together, and formed a torso that pressed into his own and gave him something solid to rut his hips against. His legs were trembling. 

Before he could summon his thoughts into something resembling _Fuck, I need to breathe_ , Venom pulled back from the kiss, eyeing him over greedily as Eddie caught his breath. Instead of a snaking, disembodied head, Venom had taken the form that the two of them shared when they were one being- a hulking rippling eight-foot tall mass of liquid darkness, melding seamlessly into Eddie’s legs. He was blocking all light from the windows, filling Eddie’s entire field of vision. Eddie hadn’t realized Venom could take that shape when Eddie wasn’t, you know, _wearing_ him. Enveloped in him. But at this point he wasn’t sure anymore if he was inside Venom or if Venom was inside him. 

**INSIDE US** , Venom snarled. And then he plunged a single giant hand up into Eddie’s torso, elbow-deep, like he was made of nothing more than liquid, and lifted him by his rib cage to seat him on top of the counter. Eddie gasped--well, if he was being honest with himself, it was more of a high-pitched shriek--like he’d been suckerpunched, and threw his head back as the burning ooze of Venom’s claws raked across his lungs. In an instant the teeth and tongue jaws were at Eddie’s throat again, tongue curling around the angles of his jaw, stroking the curve of his ear, slipping gently between Eddie’s panting lips.

Eddie’s mind was white hot with stimulus, with searing pain and pleasure that tore out of him like a blade being ripped from his chest cavity. As his hands grasped fruitlessly behind him, he felt the matching fingers within him tighten around his esophagus from the inside. He was beside himself. No, he was _inside_ himself. It was unlike anything he’d ever attempted to comprehend. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t know if it was agony or ecstasy. All he knew is that he didn’t want it to stop.

Eddie whimpered weakly as Venom’s arm bubbled to the surface of his torso and came to rest gently on Eddie’s chest. The living rope around Eddie’s arms melted into soft caresses that swam beneath his skin. Venom waited, wrapped around him, heaving with Eddie’s breath. Slowly, Eddie wiggled sensation back into his fingers and wrists. And then he slid his boxers down to his thighs to sit bare-assed on the dirty counter. His cock sprang up, freed at last from his waistband, full and taut.

“Fuck,” he panted, “I sat in chocolate.”

With a laugh that rumbled into his bones, Venom dissolved into Eddie’s skin and reemerged as a thick black tether that shot from Eddie’s chest and stuck to the floor with a wet _smack._ It was tight as a bowstring, twanging in the dense air of the kitchen. With one sharp tug, Eddie was yanked forward off the counter. He landed deftly on his hands and knees, with reflexes that weren’t his own, and turned to look over his shoulder just in time to see a sloppy wet tongue lick across the backs of his thighs. He tasted chocolate on his own tongue, and he quivered.

“Holy shit,” he said, trying but failing to stumble to his feet, “I can’t believe this is happening.” 

A clawed hand, big enough to palm his entire head like a basketball, grasped his hair and lifted his lolling head up to see Venom’s form coagulating in front of him.

 **YOU THINK TO MUCH** , Venom said, and lifted Eddie to his feet. Eddie’s knees buckled immediately, and he clawed desperately for something to hold on to before digging his fingers underneath Venom’s surface and pulling him in for another kiss. They staggered backward together, tripping over piles of detritus from their fight. Eddie didn’t even bother to reach an arm out to steady himself, because he knew Venom would catch them. They thudded heavily onto the broken couch, with one of Venom’s tendrils cradling the nape of Eddie’s neck, and another coiled around his midsection, pooled beneath the small of Eddie’s back.

Venom drew back slowly, his long tongue still deep in Eddie’s mouth, and hovered over him. **ARE YOU READY?** Venom purred. In the wordless place that they shared, he sent Eddie the memory of their minds merged together from earlier that night, of his promise to show Eddie the other side of the mirror. 

Eddie’s eyes swam for a moment--pupils dilated as far as they could stretch--before focusing on the pale opalescence of the eyes above him. He could see himself reflected, full lips wrapped around Venom’s thick tongue, sucking hungrily. He wasn’t looking _into_ Venom’s eyes, but through them, past them, into that milky white mirror world where his reflection was turning the corners of his mouth up into a smirk, baring teeth that were sharper than he remembered. Or had he always been like this, sharp-toothed and snarling? He bit down on Venom’s tongue, a challenge in his eyes. 

_Show me what you are_ , he shouted in his mind, as clear and desperate as if he had spoken it aloud. There was the snicker-snack of gnashing teeth, the ungodly elastic noise of a jaw unhinging, and then nothing but darkness as Eddie was devoured.

And then they were gasping to life on that old couch, back arching like they’d been electrocuted. Their glistening black chest was heaving, with a pulsating web of white veins stretched across it, like the ghosts of tattoos dancing in the dim glow of the street lamps outside. They could smell fear and hunger and adrenaline and the heat of the hunt, but for a moment they couldn’t remember if they were the predator or if they were the prey. All they knew was that they _existed_ , that they were _them_ , at last, again, and with a sharp convulsion they tumbled off of the sofa and fell, and fell, and fell, and fell.

They were in the dark place again, but they were together this time, suspended in the darkness of thick water. There was movement and urgency, and they were playing chase in the passages of the blood stream, laughing together. The blood was hot and syrupy as the filling of a cherry pie steaming on a windowsill, as alive as the dance of the hivemind. Then they were in the mind, rooting for metaphors and comparisons without understanding why, knowing only that they needed to remember this feeling, to anchor firmly in that dark water so that they would know how to describe the experience when they were no longer _we,_ but _you_ and _I_.

They were in the mind, pressing desperately against the semipermeable membrane of memory, sucking every moment of existence into their own mass the way salt water draws moisture out of cells and leaves them hollow. And just as the water mingles with the salt and returns to fill the cells back up with that new solution, they infuse their very essence into the memories they found and thrust them back into the brain. Like a virus transforms host cells into replicas of itself, and the cells open up for it willingly, completely. And in return for this gift of dominance, the cells bloomed with ecstasy, unfurling euphoria into the liquid ichor of their being. 

One memory, a concept, pulses and throbs as it envelops them and coats their senses- it’s the memory of being high, of having their senses altered, enlightened, awakened to something new. They remember the way the mind burst with new colors and pathways, glistening with electricity. They could see the neurons dancing now, reenacting for them. They remember the endearing way they marveled at every little epiphany, and determined to make notes of their experience so that their sober mind could understand. But they could never make sense of their scrawlings the next morning, they could never will that altered state back into their mind, even in memory.

But hanging in that moment, they know at last **_This is what euphoria felt like, what it was always meant to be. This is what we could never remember._ ** And they know that the next time they come to this place, and the time after that, they’ll remember all over again, like waking up from amnesia. Like escaping from an endless variety of dream worlds and landing in reality, over and over and over again- not merely reliving a similar moment of waking, but the _same moment_ , with all those different instances converging together like a firework exploding in reverse. Like the birth of a black hole. And they knew that this moment was a pinpoint of eternity, a singularity, radiating the reality of _them_ and _we_ in all directions, to saturate the tissues of the void.

Every instance of euphoria that ever came or ever will come was/is visible to them in that wordless space, strung together throughout the expanse of spacetime like reflections stretching infinitely between two mirrors facing, sparkling from their place in the timeline like stars in a void, suspended all around them like Shapes in the dark water. 

It was like time travel, in a way: seeing all their past and future selves living in this moment together, concurrently. Infinite identical selves, linked in this one eternal yet instantaneous moment of ecstasy, like a hive mind in perfect harmony with itself.

Like every replication of every strand of DNA in every infected cell were to reverse their path through time and tissues, traveling backwards through the host’s system along their branches of chance and probability, until they all freeze in time at the instant of the virus’s first injection.

**_Is this what it’s like?_ **

Like a million identical spores in the exact moment they explode from the fruiting body, before they launch in every direction, only ever to grow farther apart. 

**_Is this what it’s like?_ **

Like all the potential energy of the universe sucked back up into the pinpoint of anticipation that came before the Big Bang.

With a searing flash of unspeakable truth, they splintered and exploded into a million shards of light. And those countless shards began to spill into one another like beads of mercury, until they were two distinct pools of _being_ , sprawled on the floor of a dirty apartment beside a broken couch, drenched in sweat and spit and come.

Eddie’s whole body was racked with aftershocks that bounced off of Venom’s consciousness and echoed back to him. His belly was sticky and wet, and he could feel the last of his come squeezing out of him as his abdomen convulsed, but he didn’t remember how it happened, didn’t even remember touching himself or being touched. Venom was a gooey quivering puddle draped across Eddie’s chest like a weighted blanket, humming softly just on the other side of his heartbeat.

“What...” Eddie said hoarsely, wetting his lips, “...the fuck.”

**MMH.**

“That was fuckin’...transcendent.”

**MMH.**

“I need a towel.”

Venom gathered his mass up a few inches, and then collapsed again, seeming to Eddie like a contented sigh, and then spilled his surface down to Eddie’s belly, soaking up the fluid like the gentle kiss of a thousand tiny suction cups.

“Gross,” Eddie chuckled as he placed his hand on his chest, on his Venom, and stroked softly with his fingertips.

**YOU’RE GROSS.**

“ _We’re_ gross,” Eddie smiled, and Venom gave him an almost imperceptible squeeze. Eddie closed his eyes and breathed peacefully, enjoying the soft weight of Venom’s presence surrounding him.

After about ten minutes of lazily winding his fingers through Venom’s mass, the floor stopped being comfortable.

“Alright, help me up,” he strained, trying to roll over.

**NO...WE LIVE ON THE FLOOR NOW.**

Eddie rolled his eyes.

“Well _we_ need to get to the bed, or else _our_ back is gonna hurt tomorrow.” 

Venom launched a lazy tether towards the bed, and missed completely. He tried again, and merely brought a pillow back when he retracted it. He tried a third time, and managed to wrap around the foot of the bed frame before slowly reeling Eddie towards it, dragging him across the floor.

“Not such a tough guy anymore, are you?” said Eddie, wincing as his damp bare back skid against the floor.

Venom gurgled, and then pooled beneath Eddie’s body to reduce the friction.

“One disembodied orgasm and you turn into jelly. We’ll have to do this more often if it’s the only way to shut you up.” 

Venom absolutely sparkled with bliss.

“Yeah yeah, you big softy. But we’re doing it my way next time.”

 **I CAN LET YOU PRETEND TO BE IN CONTROL, IF YOU LIKE** , Venom murmured.

“What do you know, anyway? Your cherry’s been popped for what, five minutes, and you already think you’re the expert?” 

**YES.**

Eddie scoffed. He also blushed. And then he was close enough to the bed to climb into it sloppily, one leg hanging over the side, bare ass to the heavens. Venom withdrew from him, and swam back across the cluttered floor to the kitchen, connected to Eddie by a single strand wound around his ankle.

“Hey, I have a question,” Eddie mumbled into his pillow, drooling slightly and fanning the back of his neck with his hand.

 **WHAT.** Venom’s voice in his mind was distant, and Eddie could hear Venom knocking around clumsily in the kitchen cabinets.

“You could’ve, like, ‘neutralized’ the booze in our system, right? Sobered us up at will?”

**CORRECT.**

“Why didn’t you?”

**WANTED TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.**

“And now you know, huh? You must be pleased with yourself.”

Eddie could feel a soft ripple through the tendril around his ankle.

Eddie scrambled for his phone in the pocket of his pants that lay heaped on the floor, and then opened up the notes app to start a new note:

  * -ISKINK THE ABSTRACT COMCEPT OFPARADOX?
  * SWAS YHE SHArk me
  * what color are thebraim chemcals
  * Liquid used for torturebut with oxygen in it so you don’t drown, flouro-somethn
  * Spores?



He knew he wouldn’t know what any of it meant when he woke up the next morning. He already didn’t remember why those things had stuck in his mind, only that some part of him--of _them_ \--wanted to remember.

He set his alarm, plugged in his phone, and reached out to place it on the nightstand, but stopped short when he saw that his glass of water had been refilled, with half its contents sloshed out in a clumsy trail from the kitchen. Venom was still wrapped around the glass when Eddie lifted it up, and he gladly slithered down Eddie’s arm and settled home in Eddie’s chest. Tears began to well up in the corner of Eddie's eyes as he pressed the glass to his cheek, cool and solid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW that was a doozy to write! Finally i get to vicariously live out my kink of everyone resolving their miscommunications and talking about their feelings. I feel like this is a fitting end for Part 1, but i might do a short little epilogue scene for ch6. Either way, I've already started working on Part 2! Enjoy!


	6. Stranger (an Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is this gonna be weird?” Eddie asked out loud, before he could overthink it.
> 
> YES, Venom said frankly, BUT IT WAS ALREADY WEIRD.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Pigeon, who stayed up all night two days ago binge-reading my fic and commenting on every chapter. Readers like you are the reason I write!

For the first time since the Life Foundation Incident--nearly a week ago at this point--Eddie managed to sleep through the night without dreaming about the explosion, and the scent of rocket fuel, and the sensation of Venom evaporating out of his skin and burning up in the orange light. He didn’t wake up screaming, or crying out for the other half of himself that he feared was lost forever. Instead, he floated gently to the surface of consciousness and rolled over onto his back. The morning light coming in through the windows cast a red glow on the inside of his eyelids. His eyes fluttered open and he saw a toothy grin hovering above him.

**PERFLUOROCARBON,** Venom said the instant Eddie opened his eyes.

Eddie blinked up at him, squinting. The gears within Eddie’s brain shuffled off their cobwebs and began to turn, but he was still coming up blank.

“Huh?” was all he could manage. 

**YOU MADE A NOTE IN THE PHONE. THE BREATHABLE LIQUID CHEMICAL? BUT COULD NOT REMEMBER THE NAME.**

Eddie turned his head to stare at the window for a moment, then looked back to Venom.

“What?” His morning voice was thick and raspy, and his tongue felt all dried and shriveled, as though he had fallen asleep with his mouth open. He could feel a trail of drool crusted to the side of his face. 

He reached out for his phone on the nightstand, but his hand was asleep and his fingers were numb. He groaned lazily, and thwacked his hand on top of the phone a few times before a sticky mass swelled out of his palm to envelop the phone.

“Shit, it’s already ten,” Eddie mumbled as he unlocked his phone with his other hand. His screen opened to his notes app, and he scanned the reminders he had written for himself the night before. He had no idea what any of it meant. But sure enough, there was a bullet point for “Liquid used for torturebut with oxygen in it so you don’t drown, flouro-somethn.”

**SEE? PERFLUOROCARBON,** Venom said, watching him expectantly.

Eddie rubbed his eyes.

“How do you know that?” he asked. He propped himself up on his elbows, and Venom shrank down to form a pool of undulating darkness on Eddie’s chest. Eddie felt their shared heart flutter at the sensation. 

**INTERNET,** Venom said in Eddie’s mind, somehow looking smug without currently having a face.

“How did you even- Did you use my phone?”

**IT’S** **_OUR_ ** **PHONE.**

“But how did you even access it? It’s fingerprint locked!”

**TAKE A WILD GUESS.**

Eddie’s hand lifted up of its own volition and stuck a finger in his nose.

“Gross,” Eddie laughed, and collapsed back down into his pillows. He glanced at his phone again; he had dozens of unread emails, a text from Anne, and two different alarms he’d apparently slept through. He placed the phone face down on the bed and closed his eyes.

“God, I slept like I was in a coma,” he said, mostly to himself.

**BEEN WAITING TO TELL YOU ABOUT PERFLUOROCARBON FOR THREE HOURS.**

Eddie smiled and rolled his eyes, 

“Why didn’t you wake me up when my alarms went off?”

Venom shrugged internally.

**OUR BODY NEEDED TO REST. YOU SEEMED...PEACEFUL. YOU LOOK SO SMALL WHEN YOU SLEEP. VULNERABLE.**

Eddie curled over onto his side and hugged Venom’s presence close. 

He felt the reality of the night before clinched to the periphery of his mind, but he dared not indulge himself by turning his inward gaze directly upon. Wasn’t ready to give Venom the satisfaction of knowing how eager he was to relive it, even if only in his mind. Their mind. 

As if Venom didn’t already know. He flushed pink and shut his eyes tight.

A memory surfaced in his mind of a female friend he’d had back in college; they’d been perfectly platonic housemates for most of a semester until one drunken hookup had them avoiding eye contact every day until the lease was up. Neither of them could hook up with anyone else in their shared apartment without the other being _weird_ about it. 

So of course he decided to never again hook up with a roommate. Makes things complicated. All things considered, it was a sensible rule for a college student to have. 

But Eddie was a Real Adult now, with marginally better-developed emotional maturity. Right? Surely he was capable of stomaching a little awkwardness without avoiding someone for four months. Actually, he was fairly certain that avoidance wasn’t even going to be an option. Might as well—

“Is this gonna be weird?” Eddie asked out loud, before he could overthink it.

 **YES,** Venom said frankly, **BUT IT WAS ALREADY WEIRD.**

Eddie scoffed. “No, I mean...is it gonna be awkward between us? Because if it is, I’d rather get it all out of the way now instead of… I dunno, stewing in it.”

 **AWKWARD,** Venom said after pondering for a moment, **I SEE THE WORD IN YOUR MEMORY BUT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT.**

Eddie felt the first stirrings of the now familiar sensation of Venom preparing to rifle through his mind to find the definition. But Venom stopped short, hesitating. They waited.

Eddie breathed deep. With a feeling like parting a curtain, he invited his Other inside, and began unwrapping the protective casing that surrounded a collection of tender and fragile things, like broken seashells from the beach.

It was a collection of all the things he used to do as a child that other people had labeled “awkward”: standing a little too close when others were talking, repeating their words under his breath, asking questions that were a little _too_ personal, a little _too_ probing- all the while being unable to grasp what it was about himself that made him so different from the other children. 

He was told the feeling was called “awkward” but he didn’t understand it. There were times that he felt like…well, like an alien in a foreign world full of confusing and arbitrary customs that were never intended to make sense, but that he was expected to follow nonetheless. But no matter how hard he tried to pantomime proper behavior, it was always clumsy and abrasive and inconvenient, like he just didn’t fit in everyone else’s world. 

**OH,** Venom hummed **, I SEE.**

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “Awkward is when...you can’t figure out how to act or how to be. Like you’re doing something wrong, but don’t know what it is.” 

Amongst the collection of little shells that were Eddie’s memories, there seemed to be a colorful glimpse of some idea half-recalled, a book half-read in middle school, a phrase that had stayed with him for all those years since. Venom reached for it, and a sparkle of recognition rippled through them as they turned it over in their mind’s eye.

**A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.**

Eddie smiled bitterly. “Exactly.” Venom shifted their weight within Eddie’s mind, and it gave Eddie the impression of a cat cocking its head to one side. 

**WHY WOULD WE WANT TO FEEL THAT? LIKE A STRANGER?**

“I mean, nobody does, that’s the point—” Eddie began to wrap his memories back up for safekeeping, tucking them away in a dark corner where they’d lived all these years. Venom made note of the spot where he kept them.

**SHOULD WE...FEEL AWKWARD?**

“No, that’s not what— Look, I just didn’t want you to be...uncomfortable. Or something. Ok?”

**IS AWKWARDNESS COMPULSORY?**

“I mean, I guess not.”

**THEN WHY DO YOU BOTHER?**

Eddie considered this. 

“I guess it’s just a reaction to how other people treat you.”

**I WILL NOT TREAT YOU LIKE A STRANGER.**

Eddie curled tighter into his own embrace. 

**WILL I TREAT YOU LIKE A LOSER? YES.**

“Oh, fuck off.”

**BUT NOBODY ELSE CAN. OR ELSE WE WILL EAT THEM.**

Eddie rolled his eyes affectionately, and then finally unfurled his limbs into a big stretch. He felt the warmth travel along the length of his body, surging into his toes and fingertips. He was naked, of course, fully exposed beneath his patchwork windows under the bright morning sun. Black veins webbed across his torso, and he traced them with his fingertips.

**I AM NOT UNCOMFORTABLE,** Venom said. 

“No,” Eddie said, “Neither am I.”

It was at this moment that Eddie’s phone began to buzz. He ignored it, assuming it was a text, but it kept going. A phone call, then. 

He checked the screen and saw an unknown number. After grunting under his breath, he answered it. 

“Eddie? Oh thank God you answered. Anne was worried—” 

“ _Dan?_ ” Eddie interrupted. In an instant his mind raced back to the last time he’d given Dan a passing thought: yesterday, on Anne’s front stoop. The kiss. _We’re not going to tell Dan about this._

God, so much had happened since then. Was that really only yesterday? When was the last time he’d even seen Dan? Was it back at the hospital, when Venom had tried to strangle him? He suddenly felt the need to cover himself up with his bedsheet.

“I hope it’s alright Anne gave me your number. She said she tried to get a hold of you earlier but you weren’t answering. Is everything alright? Are you doing ok?” 

“Uhh- uhh…” Eddie stammered, trying to remember how phone conversations were supposed to work, “Hey...Dan… hey. Hi! Yes, everything’s fine. Never better.”

**SMOOTH.**

Eddie covered the receiver with one hand and stage-whispered “Do you mind?”

He realized too late that Venom had been speaking inside his head.

“Well uh...that’s good to hear,” Dan said, as unflappable as ever, “Look, Eddie, I realize that...a lot has happened this week, to say the least. I’m not still not exactly sure what’s going on. But regardless of all that, I still have a healthy degree of concern for, well, your health.”

Eddie sat up in bed and ran his fingers through his hair. His fingers were cold- Venom had retreated back into his chest, back into the base of his skull.

“That’s… Huh. I appreciate it, Dan.That’s certainly more than I deserve.”

“I’ll be Frank, Eddie; last time I saw you, half your organs were failing. Some of them were completely missing. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how you’re still alive. I don’t expect you to tell me everything, but I just want to know whether Anne and I have cause for concern.”

“For my organs?”

“I— yes, for your organs.”

**THEY’VE CERTAINLY BEEN REARRANGED.**

“Will you knock it off?” Eddie whispered over his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh fuck, I was, uh, talking to myself.”

“Is this a bad time? I can call back—”

“No, it’s fine. Sorry. It’s fine. Do you want me to come back to the hospital for more tests?” 

“Well yes, I’d prefer to do some more tests, but I won’t pressure you.” 

**NO MRI.**

“I’m not gonna do another MRI.”

“Of course, I mostly wanted to-- Wait, you’re not going to-- Hold on, do you still--? No, never mind. That’s not why I called. Anne and I were wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tonight.”

Eddie stopped in his tracks as he was swinging his legs over the side of the bed. 

“Dinner?” 

**DINNER?**

“Yes, tonight at seven o’clock. I’m cooking a— ahh, my pager’s going off. Gotta go.”

And then Dan hung up, and Eddie was left blinking dumbly into the patient silence. 

“What?” he said, his phone still pressed to his face.

**THAT WENT WELL,** Venom said contentedly.

“Dan…” Eddie mumbled, slowly lowering his phone. Calm, confident, competent Dan. Dan, whose patience and steady mask of smiling formality never failed to accentuate just how much of a fuck-up Eddie was. Whose coolness under pressure only made Eddie seem that much more erratic and unstable. Dan, whose 

Dan, who had not only witnessed Eddie climb into a lobster tank like an absolute lunatic, but had carried him out of the restaurant in his arms when he was too weak to walk. 

He wanted to resent Dan for being so _good_ , for replacing him in Anne’s life. But he could bring himself to hold any anger towards the man. All he felt was...inadequate. Powerless. And yet, when he closed his eyes, he could still see Venom’s hand wrapped around Dan’s throat, lifting him six inches off the ground...could feel the slight yielding of Dan’s windpipe, feel the throbbing off Dan’s lifeblood beneath his palm, even as he begged Venom not to hurt him…He could still see the terror in Dan’s eyes, and something in him— a hunger— well, no, he wasn’t going to think about _that_ right now. He’d had enough personal revelations this week.

“Venom, we almost killed him last week. And then we kissed his girlfriend. And now we’re keeping secrets from him. And neither of us are good liars.”

**WE DID DO THOSE THINGS, YES.**

“And now we’re gonna see him and… and Annie.”

**OH… OH.** **OH!** **  
**  


"Yep."

**ARE WE FEELING AWKWARD RIGHT NOW? IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE?**

Eddie slumped forward into his knees and dragged his hands over his face.

“Just you wait until tonight; it’s going to get so much worse.”


End file.
